From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sat Sep 6 17:25:22 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id QAA07163 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 6 Sep 1997 16:49:11 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id NAA03057 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 6 Sep 1997 13:29:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from hslrswi.hasler.ascom.ch (hslrswi.hasler.ascom.ch [139.79.129.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id HAA20012 for ; Wed, 3 Sep 1997 07:17:31 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from ens.ascom.ch (chieftain.ens.ascom.ch [139.79.60.1])
by hslrswi.hasler.ascom.ch (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA24107
for ; Wed, 3 Sep 1997 16:23:16 +0200 (MET DST)
Received: from spbx399.ens.ascom.ch by ens.ascom.ch (4.1/SMI-4.1-DNI-7.0.1)
id AA05605; Wed, 3 Sep 97 16:25:33 +0200
Received: from spbx09.ens.ascom.ch by spbx399.ens.ascom.ch (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
id PAA20094; Wed, 3 Sep 1997 15:23:09 +0100
Received: by spbx09.ens.ascom.ch (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
id PAA20526; Wed, 3 Sep 1997 15:23:08 +0100
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 15:23:08 +0100
From: lewis@ens.ascom.ch (Mark Lewis - Ascom PSD Cardiff UK)
Message-Id: <199709031423.PAA20526@spbx09.ens.ascom.ch>
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Searching through mail archives and fighting spam...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Md5: J4KXg/roGd2yuj9LpD8HjQ==
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Hi
On the subject of fighting spam I have just installed an email
filter (written in Perl) that manages to catch a large amount
of the spam that is sent to me. I'm not sure if it would
work with majordomo (perhaps some of the workers could advise).
The filter came from http://www.nags.org/ and is very easy to
install.
Cheers
Mark
------------------------------------------------------------------
| Mark Lewis | Phone: +44-1222-774501 |
| Ascom Telecommunications Ltd | Fax: +44-1222-774500 |
| Cypress Drive | Email: lewis@ens.ascom.ch |
| Cardiff, CF3 0EG, UK | http://www.ascom.ch/ |
------------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 7 11:49:02 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id LAA26481 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 11:47:06 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from out1.ibm.net (out1.ibm.net [165.87.194.252]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id LAA26385 for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 11:46:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from slip166-72-107-156.ct.us.ibm.net (slip166-72-107-156.ct.us.ibm.net [166.72.107.156]) by out1.ibm.net (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id SAA68140; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 18:52:17 GMT
From: Mick.Brown@super.zippo.com (Mick Brown)
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Cc: "Aliza R. Panitz" , buglady@ability.net
Subject: from Aliza Panitz (fwd) Listbombing form letter
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 18:53:29 GMT
Organization: me
Reply-To: "Aliza R. Panitz"
Message-ID: <3413f5a6.1460895@smtp1.ibm.net>
X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/16.451
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Aliza has been "list bombed" since she is an antispam advocate. This came from a closed secure
list so I have a high degree of certainty that it is her without digging out PGP and installing
it. Please check if she has been subscribed to your lists on or after 27 August.
Received: (aliza@localhost) by yakko.ability.net (8.7.6/8.6.12) id MAA20831; Sun, 07 Sep 1997
12:15:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Aliza R. Panitz"
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 12:15:49 -0400 (EDT)
To: a.couple.of@mailing.lists
Message-id: <199709071615.MAA20831@yakko.ability.net>
Subject: Listbombing form letter
This is the form letter that I'm sending to list owners. Feel free to
get out your red pens and suggest improvements.
I would appreciate it if someone on the listmanagers list would forward
this there; let me know if you can do this, so that it only gets sent once.
(With the Reply-To: set to me, please.)
My PGP key is available from the MIT keyserver and from my homepage.
- Aliza
Bcc: Spam-L, Zspam, Trakker, Elbows mailing lists
A few other people -- you should know who you are
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On August 28th, 1997, I was mailbombed with several hundred mailing
list subscriptions forged in my name.
As far as I can tell, your list was one of those.
Please remove me from your list.
If you were running modern list software with subscription confirmation
capabilities this form of attack on me and on your list would not have
succeeded. Please consider upgrading your list processing software, since
the automated mailbombing scripts that are widely distributed all come with
large lists of mailing list addresses -- if I was subscribed to your list
by a mailbomber, chances are that many other people will be in the future.
As partial protection against this instance of mailbombing, I disabled
mail to this account for over a week. Many mailing lists will
auto-unsubscribe accounts whose mail bounces repeatedly. Since I am still
getting mail from your list, you apparently do not have this feature. You
may want to look into adding this feature to your list processor.
Unfortunately, most Internet mail software was designed around the model of
a cooperative network. With spammers, mailbombers, and forgers widespread
and automated, this model no longer works, and everyone's mail systems need
to be retrofitted under fire to a higher security model. It is a substantial
hassle to all of us, especially people who contribute to the net by running
mailing lists and providing other communal resources.
In particular, over the past year I have been repeatedly targetted for
harassment (by listbombing, by spams forged in my name, and even by threats
to the U.S. Congress and President forged in my name) because of my
anti-spam position. It appears that I am a target because I have been a
co-author of the anti-spam Web site at http://spam.abuse.net/ and because I
am a member of CAUCE (The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
at http://www.cauce.org/)
- Aliza R. Panitz
buglady@ability.net
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
iQCVAwUBNBHF8Jb8iHbdMoM9AQHGJQP/Yc+2awJAbJuzOiQeqIS6+mm7kEX+59xz
dN4QkFZ9tW19yvVwOVhjOT0a578ZB+dMnfkBcsS36mfHAXbqgfaydM+ZSqfLBGq0
7vcYK7fJwdp7d30Sr0mU3o8LMmyefKzEHnB8d6gQiIB5RjQik7OUJ3mMbZpnNBAH
xNnXmjHYxd0=
=zvqn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
Aliza R. Panitz http://www.ability.net/~buglady/ buglady@ability.net
AccessAbility Internet Services: http://www.ability.net/
(Value-added Web site hosting; Internet Credit Card processing; and more!)
//Complete the following: private3@mci.savetrees.com Spammy is to
// ethical business practice as Jeffrey Dahmer is to ...
// a) contradancing b) window shopping c) bungee jumping d) fine dining.
// Spammy and his friends usually reside on AGIS.net
// Learn to Clobber SPAM - visit http://spam.abuse.net
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 7 16:18:54 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id QAA23392 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 16:04:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cyberq.quality.org (cyberq.quality.org [199.181.80.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id QAA23383 for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 16:04:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (help@localhost)
by cyberq.quality.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA02104;
Sun, 7 Sep 1997 19:10:57 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 19:10:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Bill Casti, CQA (System Administrator)"
To: "Aliza R. Panitz"
cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, buglady@ability.net
Subject: Re: from Aliza Panitz (fwd) Listbombing form letter
In-Reply-To: <3413f5a6.1460895@smtp1.ibm.net>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Nope, not on any of my lists. I employ an authenticator which sends a
message to the address purportedly subscribing and requiring them to send
back an authentication code within 24 hours before the subscription is
processed. This stops the subscription forgeries--unless, of course, one
of you other multiple personalities entered the subscription request and
all of your personalities have access to your same account.
Regards.
Bill
=============================================================================
Bill Casti, CQA Email: help@quality.org
- Domain Owner, QUALITY.ORG Pager: +1 800 604 6149
- List Moderator, "TQM in Manufacturing and Service Industries"
- Chairman, Electronic Media Committee & Database Chair
ASQ Section 0511 (Northern VA) Section Email: ASQ0511@asq0511.org
- 1997-98 Chair-elect, Executive Board, ASQ Section 0511
- Senior Administrator, Internet & Firewall Systems, FEMA
- North Point Director, Reston Citizens' Association Board, 1997-98
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW! Browse and Buy from our new Online Quality Bookstore!
http://www.quality.org
=============================================================================
On Sun, 7 Sep 1997, Mick Brown wrote:
> Aliza has been "list bombed" since she is an antispam advocate. This came from a closed secure
> list so I have a high degree of certainty that it is her without digging out PGP and installing
> it. Please check if she has been subscribed to your lists on or after 27 August.
>
> Received: (aliza@localhost) by yakko.ability.net (8.7.6/8.6.12) id MAA20831; Sun, 07 Sep 1997
> 12:15:49 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Aliza R. Panitz"
> Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 12:15:49 -0400 (EDT)
> To: a.couple.of@mailing.lists
> Message-id: <199709071615.MAA20831@yakko.ability.net>
> Subject: Listbombing form letter
>
> This is the form letter that I'm sending to list owners. Feel free to
> get out your red pens and suggest improvements.
>
> I would appreciate it if someone on the listmanagers list would forward
> this there; let me know if you can do this, so that it only gets sent once.
> (With the Reply-To: set to me, please.)
>
> My PGP key is available from the MIT keyserver and from my homepage.
>
> - Aliza
>
>
> Bcc: Spam-L, Zspam, Trakker, Elbows mailing lists
> A few other people -- you should know who you are
>
>
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 7 20:03:14 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA26136 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:00:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sky.net (solar.sky.net [198.70.175.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA26084 for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:00:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Sky (ip68.kc.sky.net [206.230.165.68])
by sky.net (8.8.6/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA19117
for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 22:06:36 -0500 (CDT)
Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19970907220833.00710768@solar.sky.net>
X-Sender: price@solar.sky.net
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32)
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 22:08:33 -0500
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Paul Allen Rice
Subject: Re: from Aliza Panitz (fwd) Listbombing form letter
In-Reply-To:
References: <3413f5a6.1460895@smtp1.ibm.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On 07:10 PM 9/7/97 -0400, the following was submitted for consideration by
Bill Casti, CQA (System Administrator):
>
>Nope, not on any of my lists. I employ an authenticator which sends a
>message to the address purportedly subscribing and requiring them to send
>back an authentication code within 24 hours before the subscription is
>processed. This stops the subscription forgeries--unless, of course, one
>of you other multiple personalities entered the subscription request and
>all of your personalities have access to your same account.
>
>Regards.
>Bill
>
She's not one any of my lists either...
But I must point out that there is a way to circumvent the confirmation
process... IF whomever was devious enough to list bomb her in the first
place is devious enough to carry it through....
All one needs to do is set up one of those emailer accounts with NetAddress
or similar free account and mass sub that address, which is temporarily
forwarded to your own account. Once all the lists are confirmed, then
change the forwarding address to your victims address and you are done.
The downside is that you have to reply to all these confirmation messages,
but with Eudora and filtering, its relatively easy to do.
And big deal that we have a confirmation process in place that prevents
someone from being subbed to an unwanted list. If you were list bombed
like this person was, you would still have hundreds of confirmation
requests to wade through to dig your way out.
The problem is not solved by the confirmation process. The ultimate
problem is that we do not have a way to confirm in the initial contact
message whether the subscription request is valid or not. There needs to
be a more secure method up front of subscribing to mailling lists and other
services. We, as list owners, should not stop here, but push for
advancements in online email security and fraud detection.
Now, does anyone have any ideas?
Paul
------------------------------------------------------------
(o)(o) Paul Rice
> Listowner: CircleJoke and Underground Mailling Lists
\/ mailto:PaulRice@Broadcast.net
------------------------------------------------------------
"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards
could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks
to the Internet, we know this is not true."
--Robert Wilensky, University of California
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 7 21:03:16 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA02279 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:58:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA02186 for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:58:07 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id XAA07768; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 23:04:47 -0500 (CDT)
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: from Aliza Panitz (fwd) Listbombing form letter
References: <3413f5a6.1460895@smtp1.ibm.net> <3.0.3.32.19970907220833.00710768@solar.sky.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.100)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
From: Jason L Tibbitts III
Date: 07 Sep 1997 23:04:47 -0500
In-Reply-To: Paul Allen Rice's message of Sun, 07 Sep 1997 22:08:33 -0500
Message-ID:
Lines: 28
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.46/Emacs 19.34
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
>>>>> "PAR" == Paul Allen Rice writes:
PAR> All one needs to do is set up one of those emailer accounts with
PAR> NetAddress or similar free account and mass sub that address, which is
PAR> temporarily forwarded to your own account.
Heck, all you need is any UNIX account; you just put the list of people to
bomb in the .forward file.
PAR> The problem is not solved by the confirmation process. The ultimate
PAR> problem is that we do not have a way to confirm in the initial contact
PAR> message whether the subscription request is valid or not. There needs
PAR> to be a more secure method up front of subscribing to mailling lists
PAR> and other services.
I don't believe that there's anything you can do that doesn't make things
worse for legitimate users. I can start forwarding messages now, from
lists I've been on for ages. (And I have had this happen on my lists.)
The only partial solutions I can think of are things like waiting periods
or forced resubscriptions (after a week or so you must send back a token to
remain subscribed). These tend to make it harder on real subscribers.
I suppose you could just make the price of admission higher by making
potential subscribers scour some introductory document for obscure
instructions, but that seems to me to be counterproductive. After all, we
want subscribers. If we didn't, we wouldn't be running lists.
- J<
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 7 21:33:34 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id VAA06059 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 21:20:11 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from flamingo.bahamas.net.bs ([206.138.16.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id VAA05945 for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 21:19:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from LOCALNAME (dial64.bahamas.net.bs [206.138.17.64]) by flamingo.bahamas.net.bs (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id AAA06659; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 00:31:38 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 00:31:38 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199709080431.AAA06659@flamingo.bahamas.net.bs>
X-Sender: iadams@mail.bahamas.net.bs
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: Paul Allen Rice , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Irwin
Subject: Re: from Aliza Panitz (fwd) Listbombing form letter
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 10:08 PM 9/7/97 -0500, Paul Allen Rice wrote:
>>Nope, not on any of my lists.
>>Bill
No, she is not on my list .... thanks for the info. By the way, Paul IS
right. There is a way to circumvent the confirmation process !! There are
some very smart "hackers" out there.
Irwin.
---------------
Digital Satellite t.v. NO equipment to buy !!
Cancel if not satisfied.
Professional Development Programs.
24 hours/day .. Less than $10.00/month.
Send mailing address for colour brochure. < spectra@cashflow.com >
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 7 22:03:15 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id VAA09238 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 21:38:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from webdreams.com (www.webdreams.com [199.125.85.28]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id VAA09201 for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 21:37:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost by webdreams.com (5.65v3.2/1.1.10.5/29Aug96-0251AM)
id AA26761; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 00:45:02 -0400
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 00:45:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brock Rozen
Reply-To: Help Desk
To: List Managers
Subject: Subscription security, tokens, etc (in response to Jason T.)
Message-Id:
X-Backup: Disable
X-Url: http://www.webdreams.com/~brozen
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
A complicated idea that would be fairly seamless to the subscriber could
consist of a certificate idea based on Netscape implementation of server
certificates.
If each list had it's own certificate that was received by the subscriber
upon subscription. The mailing list software could "ping" each user once a
month (or whatever), any capable browser would automatically respond based
on the certificate's installed. If the list certificate wasn't installed,
the reader would ask the user if they want to install it or be removed
from the list.
If you wanted to unsubscribe you would remove a certificate from your
listing.
Just an idea -- and I know it'd be a huge hassle. It wouldn't even solve
bounces of unknown users either....so go figure.
All that to just make sure the people who are on the list actually want to
be on the list.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Brock Rozen | brozen@webdreams.com | http://www.webdreams.com/~brozen |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 8 04:48:02 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id EAA07169 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 04:43:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from kparker.nai.net (kparker.nai.net [208.133.166.213]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id EAA07145 for ; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 04:42:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (admin@localhost)
by kparker.nai.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA28528
for ; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 07:51:57 -0400
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 07:51:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ken Parker
To: List Managers
Subject: Re: from Aliza Panitz (fwd) Listbombing form letter
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970907220833.00710768@solar.sky.net>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sun, 7 Sep 1997, Paul Allen Rice wrote:
> The problem is not solved by the confirmation process. The ultimate
> problem is that we do not have a way to confirm in the initial contact
> message whether the subscription request is valid or not. There needs to
> be a more secure method up front of subscribing to mailling lists and other
> services. We, as list owners, should not stop here, but push for
> advancements in online email security and fraud detection.
>
> Now, does anyone have any ideas?
Some of the messages I've seen people post to list-managers show the
sub-scribe[1] request to multitudes of lists at once. Would it be
possible for Majordomo, listproc, listserv, etc, to catch when more
than one address shows up in the "To:" field (or more than a
threshold) and bounce the request to the list admin? Also, if any
list software AT ALL supports "sub-scribe all", or "sub-scribe *"
(which I've also seen posted), it should be shot!
Till later,
Ken Parker
[1] Dash added to prevent administrivia trap.
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 8 23:35:57 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id XAA22334 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 23:25:42 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cyberq.quality.org (cyberq.quality.org [199.181.80.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id XAA22255 for ; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 23:24:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (help@localhost)
by cyberq.quality.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id BAA04385;
Tue, 9 Sep 1997 01:48:18 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 01:48:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Bill Casti, CQA (System Administrator)"
To: Paul Allen Rice
cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: from Aliza Panitz (fwd) Listbombing form letter
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970907220833.00710768@solar.sky.net>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Sure, no matter how thorough one is, there will always be a way to
circumvent it. I'm not trying to invent the perfect system, just one that
works pretty well, most of the time.
Bill
On Sun, 7 Sep 1997, Paul Allen Rice wrote:
> On 07:10 PM 9/7/97 -0400, the following was submitted for consideration by
> Bill Casti, CQA (System Administrator):
>
> >
> >Nope, not on any of my lists. I employ an authenticator which sends a
> >message to the address purportedly subscribing and requiring them to send
> >back an authentication code within 24 hours before the subscription is
> >processed. This stops the subscription forgeries--unless, of course, one
> >of you other multiple personalities entered the subscription request and
> >all of your personalities have access to your same account.
> >
> >Regards.
> >Bill
> >
>
> She's not one any of my lists either...
>
> But I must point out that there is a way to circumvent the confirmation
> process... IF whomever was devious enough to list bomb her in the first
> place is devious enough to carry it through....
>
> All one needs to do is set up one of those emailer accounts with NetAddress
> or similar free account and mass sub that address, which is temporarily
> forwarded to your own account. Once all the lists are confirmed, then
> change the forwarding address to your victims address and you are done.
>
> The downside is that you have to reply to all these confirmation messages,
> but with Eudora and filtering, its relatively easy to do.
>
> And big deal that we have a confirmation process in place that prevents
> someone from being subbed to an unwanted list. If you were list bombed
> like this person was, you would still have hundreds of confirmation
> requests to wade through to dig your way out.
>
> The problem is not solved by the confirmation process. The ultimate
> problem is that we do not have a way to confirm in the initial contact
> message whether the subscription request is valid or not. There needs to
> be a more secure method up front of subscribing to mailling lists and other
> services. We, as list owners, should not stop here, but push for
> advancements in online email security and fraud detection.
>
> Now, does anyone have any ideas?
>
>
>
> Paul
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> (o)(o) Paul Rice
> > Listowner: CircleJoke and Underground Mailling Lists
> \/ mailto:PaulRice@Broadcast.net
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> "We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards
> could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks
> to the Internet, we know this is not true."
> --Robert Wilensky, University of California
>
>
>
>
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Tue Sep 9 18:34:38 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA22961 for list-managers-outgoing; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 18:31:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id RAA14681 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 17:48:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA00247 for ; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:46:44 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA33082
; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:52:51 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970907220833.00710768@solar.sky.net>
References:
<3413f5a6.1460895@smtp1.ibm.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:52:26 -0700
To: Paul Allen Rice , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: mailbomb issues...
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 8:08 PM -0700 9/7/97, Paul Allen Rice wrote:
>All one needs to do is set up one of those emailer accounts with NetAddress
>or similar free account and mass sub that address, which is temporarily
>forwarded to your own account. Once all the lists are confirmed, then
>change the forwarding address to your victims address and you are done.
Anyoner know of a case of this actually happening? Another reason not
to trust sites that don't do end-user validation on these accounts very
much. I mean, in theory, there should be SOME accountability so that
the real owner of an account can be tracked down. I know some sites
like Juno don't, but they should.
The plus side is that it'd be fairly easy to track down and stomp
something like this because the headers will make the situation quite
obvious. No, it doesn't stop it, but at least there's a straightforward
avenue to attack it (one, go to the admins at that site, and two,
filter anything forwarded through that address, the way I filter stuff
sent to me from chuqui@netcom.com, since that account has been dead so
long all I get is spam and notes on how well netcom's run, even though
multiple requests haven't killed the forwarding. grin....)
>And big deal that we have a confirmation process in place that prevents
>someone from being subbed to an unwanted list. If you were list bombed
>like this person was, you would still have hundreds of confirmation
>requests to wade through to dig your way out.
Um, true. But do you have any suggestions on fixing this? This is no
different than the mailbombers who use the info@ addresses and other
autobots to mailbomb someone, and frankly, I don't know that there's
any real solution, much less an easy one.
Given that the situation is insoluble, unless you just plain old shut
things down and stop communicating, I think the trick is to minimize
collateral damage. Yes, waking up to 100 or 200 authorization requests
is pretty painful -- but ti's better than 200 lists in full chatter
mode, no?
If you have any suggestions on how to fix this problem short of having
users call me on the phone to request subscriptions and requiring them
to fax me copies of their drivers license, I'm all for it. But I don't
think the problem is soluble in a practical way, so I'll settle for
keeping my part of the damage to a minimum. If I'm going to have a mail
list, I have to have some way of requesting access. Anything I do can
be spoofed by a motivated bomber short of (and perhaps even including)
pgp-verified e-mail addresses, especialyl if it's that first round of
authentification that is considered the problem.
Hell, for that matter, let's fix all of those problems, somehow,
magically. if I'm a mailbomber, I simply switch to sending stuff out in
a way that sends back error messages. Or do I turn off error messages,
too? So I've killed my info@, so nobody can figure out what services I
run, I can't return an authorization to verify they want the list, and
I can't send them an error message if they get it wrong, because all of
these can be abused by a mailbomber...
In other words, if we worry about anything that can be abused, we just
pack up and go home.
So unless someone has ideas, I'll minimize the damage. One
authorization request is better than 50 messages from a busy list, and
I'm building new mailbots for info@ and the like that won't return
infinite amounts of mail, but will throttle if they sense some kind of
possible attack.
Perfect? No, but if I can't stop spammers, I don't have to make it
easy. And that's good enough for now, given the technologies we work
with... Because I'm not ready to pack it in and go home, which would be
a real victory for the spammers.
>There needs to
>be a more secure method up front of subscribing to mailling lists and other
>services. We, as list owners, should not stop here, but push for
>advancements in online email security and fraud detection.
>
>Now, does anyone have any ideas?
Hey, I'm open to suggestions. But I think the real answer is a way of
validating addresses, not trying to endlessly close holes in software
that has to make assumptions on the address validity that might not be
true -- because the latter won't work. We can't close the holes, only
make them smaller. Until you can look at an address and guarantee it
came from where it says it did, all we're doing is minimizing
collateral damage, not solving the problem. So if you really want to
fix this, focus on ways of building addresses that won't successfully
be forged, and convincing the net to adopt them.
Good luck.... (grin)
chuq
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Thu Sep 11 16:16:07 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id PAA07986 for list-managers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:38:06 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id PAA07924 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:37:49 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [17.219.12.99] (A17-219-12-99.apple.com [17.219.12.99])
by public.lists.apple.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA21384
; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:43:14 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <9709100837.aa28230@pcusa01.ecunet.org>
References: from "Chuq Von
Rospach" at Sep 7, 97 08:52:26 pm
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:31:00 -0700
To: "Merrill Cook" ,
chuqui@plaidworks.com (Chuq Von Rospach)
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
Cc: PaulRice@Broadcast.Net, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 5:37 AM -0700 9/10/97, Merrill Cook wrote:
>Is there a way to make them work? Or to use PGP-signed requests in
>such a way that we can be sure they came from the email address
>they claim as their own?
A request can be PGP-signed, and verified against a public key stored
on one of the key servers set up for that.
> How can we be sure that some third party
>didn't obtain the certificate or sign the request?
That'd require taking someone's private key AND the activator password.
If they have that, then being signed up to mail lists is the least of
your problems....
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Thu Sep 11 16:20:14 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id PAA06081 for list-managers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:29:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id PAA05988 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:28:48 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from yeah.indstate.edu (yeah.indstate.edu [139.102.195.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id WAA13107 for ; Wed, 10 Sep 1997 22:39:27 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (root@localhost)
by yeah.indstate.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id AAA21024
for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 00:46:28 -0500
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 00:46:28 -0500 (CDT)
From: "J. Neil Doane"
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Majordomo Automation?
In-Reply-To: <199709110513.WAA10077@honor.greatcircle.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Hello all. Just wondering if ther is any way to achieve some measure of
automation in the creation of majordomo lists? Are there any scripts out
there for such a thing?
Neil Doane
Ps. I'm not a subscriber to this list, so if you reply could you please
'cc' me on it. :)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Thu Sep 11 16:28:58 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id PAA05074 for list-managers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:25:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id PAA04915 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:25:01 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from pcusa80.pcusa.org (pcusa80.pcusa.org [206.115.64.80]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id FAA28271 for ; Wed, 10 Sep 1997 05:33:42 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from pcusa01.ecunet.org by pcusa80.pcusa.org id aa22862;
10 Sep 97 8:37 EDT
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
To: chuqui@plaidworks.com (Chuq Von Rospach)
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 08:37:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Merrill Cook"
Cc: PaulRice@Broadcast.Net, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Sep 7, 97 08:52:26 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <9709100837.aa28230@pcusa01.ecunet.org>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I think that's why some people are touting RSA or Verisign-type
"certificates".
Is there a way to make them work? Or to use PGP-signed requests in
such a way that we can be sure they came from the email address
they claim as their own? How can we be sure that some third party
didn't obtain the certificate or sign the request? I hate to give
Verisign more business, but if it can guarantee that one of its
certificates can only be used by the rightful owner of a
particular email address, maybe that is worth paying for. The PGP
solution of getting trusted third parties to sign public keys
might work, but maintaining a large enough key ring for general
public lists sounds like a daunting task.
>From Chuq Von Rospach:
>
> Hey, I'm open to suggestions. But I think the real answer is a way of
> validating addresses, not trying to endlessly close holes in software
--
Regards,
Merrill Cook
Louisville KY
mcook@pcusa.org
http://www.pcusa.org/
-+-
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Thu Sep 11 17:05:09 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id QAA23245 for list-managers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 16:56:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (mycroft.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.35]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id QAA23221 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 16:56:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.8.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-970426)
id QAA26218; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 16:58:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id TAA14459; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 19:03:17 -0500 (CDT)
To: "J. Neil Doane"
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Majordomo Automation?
References:
Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.100)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
From: Jason L Tibbitts III
Date: 11 Sep 1997 19:03:17 -0500
In-Reply-To: "J. Neil Doane"'s message of Thu, 11 Sep 1997 00:46:28 -0500 (CDT)
Message-ID:
Lines: 10
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.46/Emacs 19.34
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
>>>>> "JND" == J Neil Doane writes:
JND> Hello all. Just wondering if ther is any way to achieve some measure
JND> of automation in the creation of majordomo lists?
There are plenty; you might want to look through the majordomo-users list
archive at . Majordomo-users
is a much better place to check for Majordomo information.
- J<
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Thu Sep 11 19:08:23 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA11106 for list-managers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 18:29:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id PAA02239 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:13:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from onramp.armchair.mb.ca (onramp.armchair.mb.ca [198.163.115.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id VAA03493 for ; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 21:36:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from flying_fish1 (flying_fish2.armchair.mb.ca [198.163.115.26]) by onramp.armchair.mb.ca (8.8.7/8.6.9) with SMTP id XAA28519 for ; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 23:47:55 -0500
Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970909235145.00eb6b24@armchair.mb.ca>
X-Sender: dave@armchair.mb.ca
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32)
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 23:51:45 -0500
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Dave Voorhis
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
In-Reply-To:
References: <3.0.3.32.19970907220833.00710768@solar.sky.net>
<3413f5a6.1460895@smtp1.ibm.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 08:52 PM 07/09/97 -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
>At 8:08 PM -0700 9/7/97, Paul Allen Rice wrote:
>
>>All one needs to do is set up one of those emailer accounts with NetAddress
>>or similar free account and mass sub that address, which is temporarily
>>forwarded to your own account. Once all the lists are confirmed, then
>>change the forwarding address to your victims address and you are done.
>
>Anyoner know of a case of this actually happening?
I have had NetAddress accounts s*bscribe to my lists for just this purpose,
and it has happened several times.
Dave Voorhis
mailto:dave@armchair.mb.ca
http://www.armchair.mb.ca/~dave
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Thu Sep 11 21:05:50 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA11992 for list-managers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:49:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA11876 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:48:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA21558
; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:55:50 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970909235145.00eb6b24@armchair.mb.ca>
References:
<3.0.3.32.19970907220833.00710768@solar.sky.net>
<3413f5a6.1460895@smtp1.ibm.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:53:51 -0700
To: Dave Voorhis , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 9:51 PM -0700 9/9/97, Dave Voorhis wrote:
>>Anyoner know of a case of this actually happening?
>
>I have had NetAddress accounts s*bscribe to my lists for just this purpose,
>and it has happened several times.
Well, thanks. Something else to watch for, I guess. So far, either I've
been lucky or nobody's told me, and given how people like to yell when
someone gets spammed...
chuq
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Thu Sep 11 21:19:15 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA12311 for list-managers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:50:18 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA12240 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:49:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA25378
; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:55:29 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <9709112022.aa08168@pcusa01.ecunet.org>
References: from "Chuq Von
Rospach" at Sep 11, 97 03:31:00 pm
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:45:27 -0700
To: "Merrill Cook" ,
chuqui@plaidworks.com (Chuq Von Rospach)
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
Cc: chuqui@plaidworks.com, PaulRice@Broadcast.Net,
list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 5:22 PM -0700 9/11/97, Merrill Cook wrote:
>Naw. Suppose I make myself a new private key, and say I'm Chuq Von
>Rospach, and assign my own pass phrase to it. Then I register the
>public key in some key repository, after making sure there wasn't
>another there with that name.
Shortly after you do that, someone who knows me will warn me, and...
>but I guess the question is, how quickly will that break
>down, without a central repository of validation (like Verisign)
>or much wider acceptance of PGP?
Well, even without the central authorization, it'll break down a lot
slower than the current system, if only because there are better checks
and balances and a higher level of sophistication necessary
successfully pull off a forgery.
Beyond that, I think you're about to see the acceptance of PGP take
off. With the IETF working towards the PGP/MIME authentification
standard, and the S/MIME version somewhat out of favor (or depending on
who you talk to, dead or doing just fine), there will within the next
year be a standard for encryption of mail messages using PGP, and
probably also RSA once the S/MIME gets back on track. But PGP is almost
a given. ONce the standard is in place, adoption will move forward
pretty quickly. That PGP has now legally migrated off continent will
also help, because the Europeans don't have to skulk any more to keep
Americans from getting in trouble with the government...
And your forgery setup is somewhat contrived. It assumes, for instance,
that I (and/or my list software) will blindly accept this. If it's
signed by a trusted source, it probably will, but just because you find
a crony to sign it doesn't mean I'll believe the crony, either. More
likely, if I get a questionable request, I'll go looking for the public
key on the site of the e-mail address. If the key isn't in a repository
that's known/trusted, like the one pgpkeys.mit.edu runs, I'll go back
to the source. So just creating a spoofed key does you nothing, because
it'll be tagged with the e-mail address, and I"ll go to that
site/address to get the public key. So you need physical access to the
account to spoof, too, and if you have that, we once again hit the
"spammed onto lists is the least of their problems" issue.
If you try to toss in a key for my address on a major key repository,
it isn't likely to go long without being caught, and it requires
someone in *my* chain of trusted validators to break down and validate
it incorrectly. Doesn't matter how many of your guys validate it,
unless one of them is also my guy, so again, I'm in control of my own
quality-of-key-control, not you. And for an unknown key without a
trusted validation, I just go to the source and/or fall back on
mailback validation, so without a validated key, you haven't
accomplished anything.
Can you still coerce it? Sure. But the bar has been raised a lot, lot
higher, the chance of catching it is a lot better, your chance of
exposure is higher, and while it's not a 100% solution, I'll take a 95%
solution, especially if what we have now is a 30% solution... No sense
waiting for perfection, if pretty-damn-good is available.
>How many of the 40 million (?)
>potential members of your list worldwide will be able to get their
>public key signed by someone you trust, or by someone less than
>three or four steps from someone you trust?
Probably more than you think, for this reason: one of the people I
expect to become a "signer of keys" will be the site
admin/postmaster/etc, and once I validate a *site*, I can then by
default validate anyone on that site, as long as that site's key is
valid and attached. So I don't need to validate every bloody user on
AOL or Earthlink or netcom or whatever. I just need to validate the
netcom connection, and then use their validation as acceptable for
users ON THEIR SITE. And only on their site.
And it's to their advantage to do this, and do it securely, because
otherwise they risk creating problems for their users -- wanna have to
explain to people why lists won't let them subscribe because they
refuse to accept keys from that site? It runs close to the UDP uunet
ran into on usenet over the netnews spam stuff, only worse -- if list
managers revoke fred.net's key because of shoddy or corrupt
validations, then that effectively locks fred.net off of any part of
the net needing validation, and the users who get locked out will leave
or force things to get fixed.
So for huge parts of the net, the answer is actually pretty easy, once
the standard is adopted, the software starts supporting it and sites
start acting as key validator/librarian for their users. It's not
overnight, but it's sure doable, and it should be quite secure. Much
better than anything we're currently doing, that's for sure.
>My guess is we'll be tempted to accept something that uses a
>signed public key, even if we don't know any of the signers.
It's up to each admin, of course, but shoddy practices give shoddy
results. YOU might be tempted to accept it, and you can with my
blessings and best wishes. But don't generalize... (grin).
>Is there any list software
>(or protocol) for handling signed requests? Any mail
Nope. But as I noted above, those standards are just now being worked
on. We're talking about Majordomo 3.0 (or 3.5) here, not 1.94.8. But
then, if you don't start thinking about stuff, it never gets
implemented... It all starts somewhere. Six months ago, encryption was
just a future. Now, it's an emerging technology. In another year, it'll
be fairly common, heading towards endemic. Now is the time to get a
feel for what it can do, so a year from now we can know HOW to do what
we want and start standardizing the interfaces and interactions, and
hopefully get the server and client sides more or less moving together
in unison...
> Any list software that will use LDAP, for that matter?
Not that I know of, but LDAP's still emerging, and it's unclear if it's
going to win, or be the end-all technology. We'll see how well its
adopted and how well it works, and if it makes sense, it'll get plugged
in...
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Fri Sep 12 17:07:22 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id QAA29190 for list-managers-outgoing; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 16:52:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id QAA29182 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 16:52:07 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (mycroft.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.35]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id RAA28344 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 17:25:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from pcusa80.pcusa.org by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.8.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-970426)
id RAA26381; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 17:26:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from pcusa01.ecunet.org by pcusa80.pcusa.org id aa04320;
11 Sep 97 20:22 EDT
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
To: chuqui@plaidworks.com (Chuq Von Rospach)
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:22:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Merrill Cook"
Cc: chuqui@plaidworks.com, PaulRice@Broadcast.Net,
list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Sep 11, 97 03:31:00 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <9709112022.aa08168@pcusa01.ecunet.org>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
>From Chuq Von Rospach:
>
> > How can we be sure that some third party
> >didn't obtain the certificate or sign the request?
>
> That'd require taking someone's private key AND the activator password.
> If they have that, then being signed up to mail lists is the least of
> your problems....
Naw. Suppose I make myself a new private key, and say I'm Chuq Von
Rospach, and assign my own pass phrase to it. Then I register the
public key in some key repository, after making sure there wasn't
another there with that name. I could even find a couple of
gullible people to sign it, most likely. Will list software let
me subscribe your mail address on the basis of a public key in a
public key server, with a couple of signatures on it?
Sure, you could require that the signed subscribe request refer to
a public key that is signed by other people that the automated
list software's routines can trust, e.g. people already on your
list, or people whose keys are signed by other people you already
trust -- but I guess the question is, how quickly will that break
down, without a central repository of validation (like Verisign)
or much wider acceptance of PGP? How many of the 40 million (?)
potential members of your list worldwide will be able to get their
public key signed by someone you trust, or by someone less than
three or four steps from someone you trust? Can your list manager
manage a public key ring big enough to validate even a small
portion of the potential general subscriber potential?
My guess is we'll be tempted to accept something that uses a
signed public key, even if we don't know any of the signers.
Supposing all the people you would want on your list have
certificates or signed public keys that you trust -- that you all
belong to a big organization, and someone else has taken care of
signing things or issuing certificates. Is there any list software
(or protocol) for handling signed requests? Any mail software that
will use the certificates or keys to submit requests? (We have a
hard enough time getting people to send a subscribe request
properly, without telling them they have to manually sign it too.
) Any list software that will use LDAP, for that matter?
--
Regards,
Merrill Cook
Louisville KY
mcook@pcusa.org
http://www.pcusa.org/
-+-
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Fri Sep 12 17:36:29 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id RAA03134 for list-managers-outgoing; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 17:24:43 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id RAA03060 for ; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 17:24:24 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id TAA10161; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 19:31:55 -0500 (CDT)
To: "Merrill Cook"
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
References: <9709112022.aa08168@pcusa01.ecunet.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.100)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
From: Jason L Tibbitts III
Date: 12 Sep 1997 19:31:54 -0500
In-Reply-To: "Merrill Cook"'s message of Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:22:48 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID:
Lines: 13
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.46/Emacs 19.34
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
>>>>> "MC" == Merrill Cook writes:
MC> Any list software that will use LDAP, for that matter?
If someone tells me just how LDAP is supposed to be used and what benefits
it will have, and if that LDAP module for Perl matures a bit, I'll see what
I can do.
I'm still not sure how trusting some directory server somewhere makes
things more secure. Isn't trusting a directory server the same thing as
trusting a key server?
- J<
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 10:39:29 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id KAA28853 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 10:29:04 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from fobos.ulpgc.es (fobos.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id KAA28830 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 10:28:51 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cicei.ulpgc.es (cicei.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.20])
by fobos.ulpgc.es (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA16956
for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:40:27 +0100
Received: from CICEI/SpoolDir by cicei.ulpgc.es (Mercury 1.31);
14 Sep 97 18:35:39 GMT
Received: from SpoolDir by CICEI (Mercury 1.31); 14 Sep 97 18:35:33 GMT
From: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
Organization: Univ. de Las Palmas de G.C.
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:35:26 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.31
Message-ID: <2DDA582F8D@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Hi all. I would like to query Senior list owners on the following
issues (please, reply to the list or, privately, as you see fit).
Due to a highly conflictive situation (which I'd define as the
'technician's dictatorship' and a few ethical issues as well) I have
dismissed my old service provider (the Swedish University Network,
SUNET).
While I informed my former systems operator that I would migrate
FISH-ECOLOGY (Scandinavia's/SUNET's largest list and the largest
worldwide in it's field), my rights to access the server were
recalled (I was 'served out') so I could not migrate the list,
porpperly, to the new provider (the MIT). Furthermore, I requested
(eleven times) the list be discontinued once it became operational
at the MIT but my former systems operator (now, supported by his
boss) refused to do so.
Now, I have suggested the following:
- *I* own the (intrinsic) intellectual rights to FISH-ECOLOGY
which became, due to my work, Internet's largest medium on
fish research;
- FISH-ECOLOGY existed due to *my* work during several years and
*I* have the right to choose whatever ISP I wish on whatever
grounds I may see fit;
- *I* own the right to the name (which *I* created);
- SUNET has to, entirely, *delete* the lists of scientists
subscribed to FISH-ECOLOGY as it is now operational at another
machine under other rules; SUNET can start their own lists on
whatever issue they wish but *neither* using the name nor the
distribution list of my medium (which has other ISP, now);
However, at SUNET, the boss suggests the following:
- It is SUNET who own's the rights to all services they give
[while their LISTSERV service has *never* been officially
acknowledged/supported] and, hence, they refuse to close down
the list at the older server, dupping the medium and creating
havoc among subscribers when they receive the 1 message/week
sent to the older site by someone who missed the information
on the migration;
This later has implied that academic activities thru LISTSERV at
SUNET depend entirely on the arbitray behaviour of the technician:
An autocracy which, definitely, leads to strange/undesired/unscholar
situations such as this one.
Some background information:
I started FISH-ECOLOGY at the Canadian Dept. of Fisheries and
Oceans (August 1994) and moved it to SUNET (Sept. 1994) due to
technical problems. At that time, when I attempted to migrate
FISH-ECOLOGY to SUNET, the canadian sysop refused to allow the
migration and created similar problems as now SUNET is doing. While
that conflict was going on, SUNET's view (by way of my former sysop
at SUNET) was as follows:
- A list exists due to the list owner's work;
- The owner has the right to migrate or do whatever s/he wishes
with the list.
However, as SUNET is now dismissed (due to repetitive insults,
threats and academic hostility among other more complex aspects
which I'll not go into detail here), they take the same position as
the former sysop at the aforementioned canadian institution.
My requests to SUNET (which have been dismissed) were as follows:
- Discontinue FISH-ECOLOGY, FISH-JUNIOR, FFRESEARCH-CONTENTS and
FFREPORTS-NEWS: All of these were my works, my initiatives and
the support from the Senior scientist community and FAO came
about due to *my* initiative and work;
- Delete all subscriptions to the services above;
- SUNET's free to start new similar services if they get the
needed personnel & know-how, contacts, etc. but DO NOT USE
the serivice names I created because they now have other
service providers.
SUNET has refused to do so.
I would like to know your opinions. If there is any comission where
I may inform about this , please, let me know. I see this as a kind
of *piracy* but such unethical behaviour is praxis at SUNET, an
institution with a clear academic-hostile policy.
You may reply to me at: SOLARIS@CICEI.ULPGC.ES
Thank you,
Aldo-Pier Solari/list owner FISH-ECOLOGY at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
*******************************************************************
FISH-ECOLOGY: New addresses from Sept. 1997 and on. Please, print.
*******************************************************************
Server (to un/subscribe): LISTSERV@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
The conference: FISH-ECOLOGY@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Requests: FISH-ECOLOGY-REQUEST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
*******************************************************************
----
Aldo-PierSolari , Fish.Res.Gr./ULP
Home-page: http://www.ulpgc.es/usuarios/solaris/index.html
PGPKey ID: 0xFDD1FD36 -- IWillNotFailThoseWithWhomIServe
----
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 13:06:43 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id MAA19284 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 12:42:42 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id MAA19235 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 12:42:29 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA29974
; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 12:49:32 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <2DDA582F8D@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 12:49:20 -0700
To: "Aldo-Pier Solari" , LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 11:35 AM -0700 9/14/97, Aldo-Pier Solari wrote:
>Now, I have suggested the following:
Some good arguments.
>However, at SUNET, the boss suggests the following:
Also some good arguments.
>This later has implied that academic activities thru LISTSERV at
>SUNET depend entirely on the arbitray behaviour of the technician:
>An autocracy which, definitely, leads to strange/undesired/unscholar
>situations such as this one.
Well, I hate to ask you this but...
What was your formal agreement with the site on who owns what? What is
their formal policy? Is there any?
Probably not, right? Generally not.
So... it all comes down to a couple of issues:
o Possession is 90% of the law, so to speak, and they have possesssion.
o If you don't like this, it comes down to how much you're willing to
fight, and wehther you can either out-stubborn them or out-legal them.
Is this something you're willing to throw money and lawyers at?
You may be right. But unless you had a formal agreement laying out the
issue, and you're willing to spend the time and money to prove it,
being right will give you a warm feeling in your heart, and not much
more.... And even if you had a formal agreement, it's only as useful as
your willingness to force them to abide by it. And frankly, down that
road there's probably no real winners.
Better to work to build up the new stuff and learn from the issue.
Figure out how to avoid getting in this situation again. Find some of
your old subscribers and have them shill your new list -- a few
well-placed "They kicked him out and grabbed his list, but he's over on
this other list now, and I'm following!" will get the word out to your
old list, andt he ones that care will move.
They can keep the list, they can't force the subscribers to stay. You
probably shouldn't go on encourage mass exodus, but they can't force
other normal users not to do so. And if they try, that's to your
benefit.
And good luck. This stuff ain't fun.
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 13:51:59 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id NAA29130 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 13:45:52 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from server.postmodern.com (kristeva.postmodern.com [198.102.244.54]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id NAA29058 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 13:45:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from 198.102.244.52 (foucault.postmodern.com [198.102.244.52]) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-960422) with ESMTP id NAA08386; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 13:53:23 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <341C4ED3.E0781F2A@postmodern.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 13:53:44 -0700
From: "Michael C. Berch"
Reply-To: mcb@postmodern.com
Organization: Postmodern Consulting, California USA
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01a (Macintosh; I; PPC)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
CC: Aldo-Pier Solari
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
References: <2DDA582F8D@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
The intellectual property rights in a mailing list or newsgroup distribution
are murky at best, but it's not really so much a legal issue as a
practical/technical one.
The traditional solution to this problem has been to set up a new, competing
list at a new site, and then wage an aggressive campaign to get the
subscribers to move over. Assuming the old host has no proprietary rights in
the name, you can continue to use it.
Set up the new list, and send a mailing to the old list stating that it has
moved, and how to subscribe. You may also be able to obtain a copy of the
list from the list processor itself. I disagree with Chuq about not
encouraging mass defection -- if you don't, there will be a longer period of
chaos during which there are two competing lists. Your mission is to make
sure that everybody knows about the new list, which might include sending an
auto-reply to all postings to the old list, advising that the list has been
moved, etc. If you are barred from posting to the old list, get someone on
the list to do it for you. A periodic posting advising of the new location
might be useful as well.
Also, do a search engine search for all mentions of the list on the Web and
other resources, including newsgroups and the list archiving and list-of-lists
services like reference.com or tile.com. Send an update to all these sites
stating that the list has moved; no need to mention the controversy -- after
all you are the official list owner, no?
In short, the old site might have "possession" of the list, but by good
marketing, you can make that an empty vessel, and after a while even the most
intransigent and hidebound institution will probably throw in the towel.
A parallel strategy might be to escalate your complaint to the
University/network's governing board. Public universities, especially in
Europe, and their research arms, tend to have many layers of bureaucracy,
ombudsmen, research committees, faculty bodies etc. Hit 'em all with some
paperwork -- you don't need a lawyer.
Good luck--
--
Michael C. Berch
mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 14:08:21 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id OAA02084 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 14:01:15 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from elvis.vnet.net (elvis.vnet.net [166.82.1.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id OAA02047 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 14:00:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from katie.vnet.net (murr@katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7])
by elvis.vnet.net (8.8.5/8.8.4) with ESMTP
id RAA13725 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 17:08:48 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.7.6/8.7.3) with SMTP id RAA21912 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 17:08:48 -0400 (EDT)
X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 17:08:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: murr rhame
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
In-Reply-To: <2DDA582F8D@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
The situation you describe is very odd. If I were a listowner who
wanted to move my mailing list to another server, I would probably
just move the list without even consulting the old service provider.
The list belongs to the listowner. If the listowner decides to move,
it's none of the service provider's business. If you paying for the
server, you may have to continue to pay the old service provider for
the duration of the contract period.
I use listproc and I'm not familiar with details of other mailing list
software. With listproc, it's fairly strait forward for a listowner
to get a copy of the subscribers list, install the subscriber list on
another server and then delete the subscriber list on the old
listproc. It would be fairly simple to make several announcements to
the list directing the subscribers to the new server address. After
posting notices for a week or so, start the new server and kill the
subscriber list on the old server.
I provide listproc services for about three dozen lists which are run
by about two dozen listowners. If one of my listowners decided to
move his list to another service provider, that is the listowner's
business. I can't imagine trying to hijack a mailing list from a
listowner. The listowner designs, builds, manages, and promotes the
mailing list. Typically, the server only provides is some CPU time,
disk space and Internet bandwidth. A mailing list doesn't belong to
the service provider.
I'm not sure what you can do about the old service provider continuing
to operate your list and using your list name. If you pursue the
matter in court, it will probably cost a lot of money and take a lot
of time. Without a contract, the outcome in court is uncertain. For
the moment, I would announce the new list address, install the
established subscriber list on the new server and continue operations
on the new server. Without the support of both the subscribers and a
good listowner, the old list will eventually wither and die.
- murr -
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 15:06:46 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id PAA10732 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:04:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from fobos.ulpgc.es (fobos.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id PAA10682 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:04:30 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cicei.ulpgc.es (cicei.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.20])
by fobos.ulpgc.es (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA18495
for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:16:14 +0100
Received: from CICEI/SpoolDir by cicei.ulpgc.es (Mercury 1.31);
14 Sep 97 23:11:24 GMT
Received: from SpoolDir by CICEI (Mercury 1.31); 14 Sep 97 23:11:18 GMT
From: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
Organization: Univ. de Las Palmas de G.C.
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:11:18 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.31
Message-ID: <3272B643E6@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Hi all and many thanks for the feed back I'm receiving. It is
highly valuable.
Some more information which may be valuable to evaluate the
situation could be (perhaps I was not sufficiently clear in my first
message) the following:
* I started FISH-ECOLOGY (FE) at the Canadian DFO;
* I moved from the DFO to SUNET due to technical (machine) reasons;
* As the sysop at the DFO refused to migrate the list,
SUNET's view was: 'The owner may do with the list whatever
s/he may see fit'; 'The list exists due to the owner's work;
* SUNET is a public money run institution;
* I did not pay anything for the service at SUNET
(I'm a Swedish academic doing a phd for a Swedish U. in an
exchange with a Spanish U., that's why I could run FE in
SUNET's machines for over 3 yr.s);
* SUNET has never recognized officially it's LISTSERV service;
(i.e. list hosting does not exist at SUNET) [due to this,
SUNET cannot claim any rights over FE in case they'd like to
overrun copyright conventions];
* I had the up-to-date review of FE;
* FE is up&running at the MIT, now;
* The list at the old site remains operative but it is dead:
SUNET has refused to close down the FE site: They seem to
attempt to show that I was kicked away - not that I dismissed
SUNET due to academic hostility and other ethical issues (not
technical reasons);
Questions:
- Isnt there an intrinsic copyright to a medium's name (and
distribution list) which belongs to the owner ?
- On what grounds is an 'owner' defined as such ?
- What does 'list owner' mean ? Is it defined by the law ?
- Is there any Internet comission where I may put forward this
issue ?
I do not fear loosing the medium. It is now up&running and the fish
research community knows me well. However, I would like to force
SUNET to skip using the FISH-ECOLOGY name and to kill the members
list which was left at the old server, as well. Lots of time and
efforts go to build up a succesfull forum and such 'coup-de-etats'
by the technicians should be hardly condemned. This is an important
issue to all list owners, I believe.
Finally, if anyone has the review of the LSTOWN-L@SEARN.SUNET.SE
list, please, send me a copy. I've been served out from that
server, the list has gone moderated and there's no way to review it.
All of this was due to the problem described in both of my mails:
The aim is to cut me off from contacting LISTSERV list managers
because that list is run by my former sysop, the one who is doing
all of this mess.
It is not the first time sysops make trouble on arbitrary grounds.
They know better than anyone that this 'vapor-ware' (and things that
happen in cyberspace) are difficult to prove. That's why very
strange situations may arise: A technician's dictatorship, beyond
any academic or even institutional control when ethics go bad to
worse.
Thank you,
APS/list owner FISH-ECOLOGY
*******************************************************************
FISH-ECOLOGY: New addresses from Sept. 1997 and on. Please, print.
*******************************************************************
Server (to un/subscribe): LISTSERV@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
The conference: FISH-ECOLOGY@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Requests: FISH-ECOLOGY-REQUEST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
*******************************************************************
----
Aldo-PierSolari , Fish.Res.Gr./ULP
Home-page: http://www.ulpgc.es/usuarios/solaris/index.html
PGPKey ID: 0xFDD1FD36 -- IWillNotFailThoseWithWhomIServe
----
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 15:22:20 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id PAA11439 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:08:46 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id PAA11425 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:08:31 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA27632
; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:16:05 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <341C4ED3.E0781F2A@postmodern.com>
References: <2DDA582F8D@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:08:15 -0700
To: mcb@postmodern.com, LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
Cc: Aldo-Pier Solari
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 1:53 PM -0700 9/14/97, Michael C. Berch wrote:
>I disagree with Chuq about not
>encouraging mass defection -- if you don't, there will be a longer period of
>chaos during which there are two competing lists.
Not as much as you might think. I would encourage it, but I'd have
someone else do it. Since the administration at the old site has
already decided to be twerps about this and take a confrontative
stance, I don't want to do anything to encourage them to get even
nastier. That's why I'd ask some friends I trust to do it and not do it
directly. it's not because I'm against it, it's because I'd rather
avoid them getting even more stupid in my direction.
>Also, do a search engine search for all mentions of the list on the Web and
>other resources, including newsgroups and the list archiving and list-of-lists
>services like reference.com or tile.com. Send an update to all these sites
>stating that the list has moved; no need to mention the controversy -- after
>all you are the official list owner, no?
Nice point!
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 15:36:33 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id PAA11844 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:11:32 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id PAA11815 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:11:21 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709142211.PAA11815@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <6.74948423@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 0:19:12 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 4474; Mon, 15 Sep 97 00:18:27 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 4910; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:18:27 +0200
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:14:17 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:35:26 GMT from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:35:26 GMT Aldo-Pier Solari
said:
Aldo, we at SUNET are really tired of this stupid little slandering fest
that you are indulging in. I have no option but to correct all your
factual disinformation until you stop doing this or my management decides
to bring this in a courtroom.
>While I informed my former systems operator that I would migrate
>FISH-ECOLOGY (Scandinavia's/SUNET's largest list and the largest
>worldwide in it's field), my rights to access the server were recalled
>(I was 'served out') so I could not migrate the list, porpperly, to the
>new provider (the MIT). Furthermore, I requested (eleven times) the list
>be discontinued once it became operational at the MIT
Actually, you requested ten times that the list be discontinued in spite
of the fact that you did NOT have a new host for it (not counting the
hosts that you claimed to have but who, once contacted, said that they
had absolutely no plans to take over your list and wondered who had told
you otherwise). We refused because we would not be doing our jobs if we
allowed a valuable Internet resource which saves money for the Swedish
government (which is SUNET's purpose in life) to be shut down just
because one particular scientist would rather burn it than let "them"
have it. SUNET works for the Swedish scientific *community*, not for the
private personal vendettas of any individual scientist. We do not delete
useful lists without a new host, period.
You then made an 11th request after having found a new host that was
actually confirmed to be a willing host. This is your first "valid"
request. My boss's answer, I believe, was that SUNET does not take orders
from you and would do as SUNET felt was appropriate. You threatened a
lawsuit again and my boss told you to go ahead and sue us. There may have
been more messages that I did not see, did not read carefully enough,
etc.
*My* answer to this 11th request was that I would recommend migrating the
SUNET list to MIT. You are thus fully aware of the fact that SUNET
intends, pending formal approval, to migrate the list to your new host,
based on certain procedural considerations which are not relevant and
none of your business. This decision, however, is made purely in the
users' interests and does not have the beginning of anything to do with
your demands, legal threats, etc. Which is what my boss was telling you:
SUNET couldn't care less what Aldo Solari wants or does not want. SUNET
does not work for Aldo Solari, but for the scientific community.
For the umpteenth time, after the grave accusations and threats that you
have made, SUNET has reached the decision to essentially cut all bridges
with you. SUNET is no longer willing to let you use SUNET servers and,
having reached a final decision at the highest level of management
concerning your case and numerous demands, SUNET is no longer interested
in listening to the orders that you keep sending and sending and sending,
because nobody at SUNET is going to disobey orders just because Aldo
Solari sent a 53rd demand. It is just as my boss told you, SUNET will do
what SUNET sees fit to do based on SUNET's own rules and policies.
> - FISH-ECOLOGY existed due to *my* work during several years and *I*
> have the right to choose whatever ISP I wish on whatever grounds I
> may see fit;
Except that SUNET has never been your (or anyone's) "ISP", and you have
never been SUNET's customer. This little distinction is the key to the
whole issue and probably the reason why the people who have responded so
far were so puzzled by the situation.
Over the years, SUNET contributed several hundred thousand dollars' worth
of computer equipment (that's the FRACTION of our mainframe used up by
FISH-ECOLOGY), bandwidth, manpower and related services to your list, at
no charge to you. You have not been a customer and SUNET has not been a
provider, it was a partnership. You have provided hundreds or perhaps
even thousands of hours of work at the $7/hour that I imagine you make as
a grad student in Mallorca. The fact is, SUNET's contribution was
enormous compared to yours, and here you are talking as if you had been
sending your money to SUNET for all these years and had just decided to
select another firm to provide the services. And let's not start a
discussion about what it would cost *today* to run the list. What matters
is what it actually cost SUNET to run the list over the course of its
existence, based on the equipment that SUNET chose to use for its mailing
list service, including a mainframe that was purchased in 1989 when there
was no other option and upgraded in 1992 when there was no credible
alternative.
The fact of the matter is that the Swedish government has spent a little
fortune making FISH-ECOLOGY a reality. Then one day Aldo Solari got upset
and wished to delete the list in spite of not having a new host for it.
Not only that, but he started to make legal threats. He said it was
illegal for SUNET not to delete the list, and threatened to sue the
government. Well, when a government spends hundreds of thousands of
dollars on something and someone suddenly claims that the government is
acting illegally and there is some law that says they must shut down the
service immediately or a costly lawsuit will ensue, chances are that the
government will react based almost exclusively on the merit of the legal
claim.
> - *I* own the right to the name (which *I* created);
Yes, yes, we know, you own the FISH-ECOLOGY trademark and we are using it
illegally. We got a good laugh out of that one. Try looking up "trade" in
your dictionary :-) And I won't even go into the likelihood of getting
"fish-ecology" registered as a trademark for the provision of services
related to fish ecology.
> - SUNET has to, entirely, *delete* the lists of scientists
> subscribed to FISH-ECOLOGY as it is now operational at another
> machine under other rules;
Look, trying to make an ethical issue out of what is simply a legal
response to a series of legal threats is not going to do anyone any good.
Lawyers do not care about discussions held on "the list-managers list",
whatever that might be, unless slander is involved. If you think you have
a legal leg to stand on, hire a lawyer and sue the government. If not,
accept SUNET's decision. If you don't like the turn this has taken, try
not making legal threats to the government the next time.
>This later has implied that academic activities thru LISTSERV at SUNET
>depend entirely on the arbitray behaviour of the technician:
I wonder how many more times I will have to repeat that this went to the
highest level of management, who are definitely not "technicians".
>However, as SUNET is now dismissed (due to repetitive insults, threats
>and academic hostility among other more complex aspects which I'll not
>go into detail here),
You know, that's a good one. After writing to SUNET management to
formally accuse a SUNET employee of (I don't know the exact English
terms) misuse of government funds and resources for private gain, and
abuse of governmental authority for private gain (all things which, per
your own letter, are "very serious accusations" - and indeed they are),
recommending the termination of that person and his replacement with a
committee of professors, all that, needless to say, without the beginning
of any proof, I think you need some nerve to talk about "threats" and
"hostility" :-) You seem to have a problem understanding that there are
various shades of gray in life, not just black and white. "Look, I
already said no once, I'm telling you no once again, next time it will be
'get lost!'" is hostility, but it is no big deal and perfectly legal.
Writing to people's management with false accusations that carry jail
sentences is also hostility, but it is a lot more serious and illegal.
Likewise, telling a government employee who refuses to disobey orders
from his management in spite of repeated demands that he has "asked for
it" and you are coming over to where he lives to "fix things up" is a
serious and illegal threat.
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 17:17:17 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id QAA26105 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 16:53:19 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id QAA26068 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 16:53:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709142353.QAA26068@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <1.AC238296@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 2:00:58 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 4720; Mon, 15 Sep 97 02:00:14 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 5432; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:00:14 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:20:47 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:11:18 GMT from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:11:18 GMT Aldo-Pier Solari
said:
> (I'm a Swedish academic doing a phd for a Swedish U. in an
> exchange with a Spanish U., that's why I could run FE in
> SUNET's machines for over 3 yr.s);
To clarify, you were allowed to run the list because it was useful. Being
affiliated with a Swedish university does not give one any kind of
automatic right to run free lists at SUNET, it merely makes it more
likely that the request will be accepted. Some of our lists are actually
run by unaffiliated list owners.
> * SUNET has never recognized officially it's LISTSERV service;
> (i.e. list hosting does not exist at SUNET) [due to this,
> SUNET cannot claim any rights over FE in case they'd like to
> overrun copyright conventions];
I don't see how internal SUNET budgeting issues could possibly be
relevant to copyright law, but you seem to know a lot more than I do
about law ;-)
> - Isnt there an intrinsic copyright to a medium's name
You cannot copyright a name.
> - On what grounds is an 'owner' defined as such ?
Technically, an owner is a person to whom the organization running the
list server is delegating certain technical privileges (right to add and
delete users, right to change list parameters, etc). These privileges are
usually a subset of the privileges delegated to the employee(s) in charge
of running the server (right to create new lists, etc). This part of the
equation is factual and can be established to a high degree of technical
detail.
Then there is the "intangible" role of the list owner as the person who
drives the discussion forward, etc. This is a gray area.
> - What does 'list owner' mean ? Is it defined by the law ?
Not unless a formal agreement was made between the two parties. It is
much too gray an area to be able to say much beyond the factual
considerations listed above.
>However, I would like to force SUNET to skip using the FISH-ECOLOGY name
>and to kill the members list
You can't, so you're wasting your time, especially as this is what SUNET
is planning to do anyway.
>Lots of time and efforts go to build up a succesfull forum
Ah, what's a few hundred thousand dollars between friends? :-)
>Finally, if anyone has the review of the LSTOWN-L@SEARN.SUNET.SE
>list, please, send me a copy. I've been served out from that
>server, the list has gone moderated and there's no way to review it.
>All of this was due to the problem described in both of my mails:
>The aim is to cut me off from contacting LISTSERV list managers
>because that list is run by my former sysop, the one who is doing
>all of this mess.
I hate to interject some facts, but the list went to REVIEW for new
subscribers months ago when we discovered that AOL was using it as a
sample for its "how to subscribe" instructions, and dozens of clueless
users were whining that they thought this was a list about basketball. I
did not approve your message because it was slanderous and approving it
would have created all sorts of problems:
1. Explicit approval of the use of government resources to slander the
government.
2. Implicit approval of the statements made, as their publication has
been reviewed and approved by a government employee. This could (in
the sense that I don't know if it does or doesn't) turn into a serious
problem if we should decide to take the issue to court.
3. We had decided to serve you off from all our servers, so actually, the
proper course of action was to serve off your new address.
It is interesting to note that, while you are telling the world that you
own FISH-ECOLOGY and cannot believe that SUNET does not recognize your
right to retain full control over all aspects of the list, at the same
time you are asking for assistance in preventing a third party from
retaining control of a mailing list that you do not have the beginning of
any involvement with. Your logic escapes me. Over the years, you have
kicked hundreds of people out of FISH-ECOLOGY, and when they appealed you
just told them "Can't you accept that you have been DISMISSED from the
list, this is permanent, it is MY list", etc. And at least half of them
were kicked out on grounds that were THAT close to personal
disagreements. Easily half of the mail I had to process for the SUNET
mailing list service were complaints from people who had been unfairly
kicked out of your list, and in some cases I had no option but to
override you and put them back. But now that YOU got kicked out, it is
suddenly different and accepting it is not an option. Say, why don't you
just ask MIT to start a SUNET-BASHING list? I would be willing to
announce the list on LSTOWN-L so that interested parties may join.
Anyway, the bottom line is that this discussion is not going to change
the law in Sweden. If you want to change laws, you need to follow the
normal democratic process and contact someone who can put in a bill, etc.
No, this cannot be done by e-mail.
Either way, by the time you are done, and assuming things go according to
plan, the list will have been transferred to MIT and SUNET will have
formally transferred all the associated rights to MIT, in writing,
including the right to have to deal with you. MIT will legally own the
list and US laws will apply. MIT runs the list on a much more expensive
mainframe than the one SUNET used and the costs are going to be even
higher than at SUNET. On top of that, US law is more money-centric than
Swedish law, so you will "own" the list even less, which I think is a
good thing, because there are 1791 other scientists contributing to it
(the overwhelming majority of which have more knowledge and seniority
than you do) and you are standing here taking all the credit and claiming
this is all YOUR work and YOUR decision, like the opinion of the 1791
others is irrelevant. Did you pause to think how much time they will have
to waste now that the WWW interface is gone? Nope, you just announced
that the list had to move, period. You were by far the most impatient
list owner where the WWW interface was concerned. You said it was
extremely important to your list, would save so many people so much time,
WHY wasn't SUNET willing to activate it before the hardware upgrade, etc.
Now 1791 people will have to do without it because Aldo Solari picked up
a personal fight with the guy who runs the service at SUNET, which
everyone was perfectly happy with. One of the reasons I recommended
migrating to MIT is that there are TWO co-owners on that list, and you
will no longer be the king of the hill. I think this will lead to a big
improvement for the 1791 scientists who couldn't care less about whether
Aldo Solari thinks Eric Thomas is the Antechrist and who are just trying
to get their work done.
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 17:37:34 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id RAA29840 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 17:28:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from fobos.ulpgc.es (fobos.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id RAA29807 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 17:27:42 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cicei.ulpgc.es (cicei.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.20])
by fobos.ulpgc.es (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA19143
for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 01:39:30 +0100
Received: from CICEI/SpoolDir by cicei.ulpgc.es (Mercury 1.31);
15 Sep 97 01:34:39 GMT
Received: from SpoolDir by CICEI (Mercury 1.31); 15 Sep 97 01:34:22 GMT
From: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
Organization: Univ. de Las Palmas de G.C.
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 01:34:15 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.31
Message-ID: <34D5182C16@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
] From: Eric Thomas :
] factual disinformation until you stop doing this or my management decides
] to bring this in a courtroom.
A good term: 'disinformation'. Make good use of it :-). If
anywhere, people in this forum are used to process lots of
information and I'm sure they'll analyze quite well how you (and I)
use terminology. Thing is *you*, on arbitrary grounds, are
harassing a list owner (who's dismissed your service on ethical
grounds - not technical) and *violating* copyright conventions, as
well.
And courtroom ?: You could end up in jail if you go to a court room
:-) Let's no go into details, your SUNET-LSoft manouvers are not a
matter for this list.
] Actually, you requested ten times that the list be discontinued in spite
] of the fact that you did NOT have a new host for it (not counting the
] hosts that you claimed to have but who, once contacted, said that they
] had absolutely no plans to take over your list and wondered who had told
] you otherwise).
Not true. Check out MITVMA.MIT.EDU: FISH-ECOLOGY is operative at
the new host and it has been so since a week ago. 9 out of the 11
times I requested FISH-ECOLOGY being closed down at SUNET were after
- I had the new host;
and
- it was denied all of the 11 times:
(a) SUNET cannot have any rigths on neither the name
'FISH-ECOLOGY' nor on the distribution list because
(a') SUNET has not any official list hosting,
it has refused, several times, to acknowledge
such a service;
and
(a'') *I* created and maintained the medium at the
DFO, moved it to SUNET and, now, to the MIT.
You've got to stop harassing list owners on arbitrary grounds as
well as stoping this clear violation of the intrinsic copyright
you've defended elsewhere (when it came close to your interests).
]We refused because we would not be doing our jobs if we allowed a
]valuable Internet resource which saves money for the Swedish
]government
FISH-ECOLOGY is a good conference, no doubt. But you *do not have
any rights whatsoever to controll it. It is *not* your medium and
you have to kill both name and list of distribution with a QUIET DEL
command: Stop harassing my membership and creating this havoc.
](which is SUNET's purpose in life) to be shut down just because one
]particular scientist would rather burn it than let "them" have it.
Well, a god phrase from the VietNam War but it doent apply to this
situation:
Firstly, I am not just 'a paricular scientist': I have created and
maintained and made FISH-ECOLOGY what is is and, secondly, I AM FREE
to choose the ISP I may see fit on whatever grounds I may have. You
*do not* have any rights to take over anything: What you are
attempting to do is robbery, a clear *violation* of copy right
conventions. And you do this because you end up believing you can
control everything, like many other sysops :-).
]SUNET works for the Swedish scientific *community*, not for the
]private personal vendettas of any individual scientist. We do not
]delete useful lists without a new host, period.
'Vendetta', another key word :-). Not a vendetta, Mr. Thomas: You
have just been dismissed as a sysop. That's all. Take gracefully
as you once said to the canadian sysop when I moved FISH-ECOLOGY
from the DFO to SUNET. Thing's you try to keep control over such
things because without them you're a manpower surplus :-).
] You threatened a
] lawsuit again and my boss told you to go ahead and sue us.
Yes, I did. And I visited the Swedish Consul in Spain concerning
this issue. I have all intellectual rights conventions behind.
] *My* answer to this 11th request was that I would recommend migrating the
] SUNET list to MIT.
Well, what a position shift :-) Amazing ... just amazing the power
of public fora such as LIST-MANAGERS :-).
]You are thus fully aware of the fact that SUNET intends, pending
]formal approval, to migrate the list to your new host, based on
]certain procedural considerations which are not relevant and none of
]your business. This decision, however, is made purely in the users'
]interests and does not have the beginning of anything to do with
]your demands, legal threats, etc.
Well, good for you. You just gave Swedish academia AND the whole of
the country a hit under the belt before the eyes of the marine
scientific community. Would you like to watch 500 mails concerning
this ? :-)
]SUNET does not work for Aldo Solari, but for the scientific
]community.
Yes, that's why they treat academics (and their 'valuable' work) as
a kind of non-existent garbage :-). You do a goebbelian use of
words :-)
] SUNET has reached the decision to essentially cut all bridges with
] you.
Excuse me, *I* have decided to cut all bridges with SUNET as long as
*you* remain there. *You* were dismissed. Do not attempt to show
to the world *I* was the dismissed: That was your aim to not
discontinue the old site. But you had to: The old site is stone
dead :-). Technically, you're very good but ethically you've proven
what you are worth :-).
] Over the years, SUNET contributed ...
The famous last 100 Propaganda words :-)
] The fact is, SUNET's contribution was enormous compared to yours,
Another amazing argument :-). Hey, I never thought FISH-ECOLOGY
would be so important :-)
] The fact of the matter is that the Swedish government has spent a little
] fortune making FISH-ECOLOGY a reality.
Amazing, I never thought SUNET cared so much about FISH-ECOLOGY :-).
For a week ago, it led: 'you are a non-existent phd student in a
non-existent place with a non-existent list called fish-ecology'
:-).
]Then one day Aldo Solari got upset and wished to delete the list in
]spite of not having a new host for it.
Not true. Just check out MITVMA.MIT.EDU :-)
] and threatened to sue the government.
Haha, not the government but you. Come down from the horse.
Nobody's going to take you seriously of you argue that way :-).
Unless you believe you are 'the government' :-) or that you are
somewhere above the law & copyright conventions.
] Yes, yes, we know, you own the FISH-ECOLOGY trademark [...]
Not a trade mark. Lists are media and they have intrinsic
copyrights such as any email or whatever.
All in all (to end up with this): Kill both name, site and
distribution list: Do not confuse my subscribers and take it
gracefully. I'm sure other list owner will learn out of this. I
have another academic site hosting my services.
Finally: I'll publicly acknowledge your good technical capacity.
However, being a professional, nowdays, takes more than writing down
commands :-).
Cheers,
Aldo-P. Solari/list owner FISH-ECOLOGY
*******************************************************************
FISH-ECOLOGY: New addresses from Sept. 1997 and on. Please, print.
*******************************************************************
Server (to un/subscribe): LISTSERV@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
The conference: FISH-ECOLOGY@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Requests: FISH-ECOLOGY-REQUEST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
*******************************************************************
----
Aldo-PierSolari , Fish.Res.Gr./ULP
Home-page: http://www.ulpgc.es/usuarios/solaris/index.html
PGPKey ID: 0xFDD1FD36 -- IWillNotFailThoseWithWhomIServe
----
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 18:06:41 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id RAA02377 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 17:58:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sky.net (solar.sky.net [198.70.175.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id RAA02351 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 17:58:29 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Sky (ip20.kc.sky.net [206.230.165.20])
by sky.net (8.8.6/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA16648
for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:06:18 -0500 (CDT)
Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19970914200321.007202b4@solar.sky.net>
X-Sender: price@solar.sky.net
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:03:21 -0500
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
From: Paul Allen Rice
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
In-Reply-To: <34D5182C16@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Now that both sides have made comments can we move on? This is obviously
no longer a discussion for the list.
Paul
------------------------------------------------------------
(o)(o) Paul Rice
> Listowner: CircleJoke and Underground Mailling Lists
\/ mailto:PaulRice@Broadcast.net
------------------------------------------------------------
"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards
could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks
to the Internet, we know this is not true."
--Robert Wilensky, University of California
------------------------------------------------------------
Support the anti-Spam amendment, go to http://www.cauce.org
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 18:21:48 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA03582 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:08:04 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from server.postmodern.com (kristeva.postmodern.com [198.102.244.54]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id SAA03567 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:07:56 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from 198.102.244.52 (foucault.postmodern.com [198.102.244.52]) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-960422) with ESMTP id SAA08962; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:15:45 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <341C8C52.BE24AC36@postmodern.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:16:06 -0700
From: "Michael C. Berch"
Reply-To: mcb@postmodern.com
Organization: Postmodern Consulting, California USA
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01a (Macintosh; I; PPC)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
References: <199709142353.QAA26068@honor.greatcircle.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
There's just one part of this that caused me to spit my afternoon coffee all
over the keyboard -- when someone (referring to SUNET) mentioned "hundreds of
thousands of dollars" and (referring to MIT) "a more expensive mainframe to
host the list".
Um... a list with 1791 members, even if quite active, would hardly cause even
a low-end Pentium to breathe hard.
Am I missing something? I do know that LISTSERV is probably the world's most
expensive list processing software :-), but aren't we off by a couple orders
of magnitude here?
(By the way, I was manager of the facility which hosted the grant-funded
BIONET mailing lists and newsgroups from 1989-1993, and have a pretty good
idea of how much the internal cost of this sort of thing runs, and unless
there's something particularly odd about FISH-ECOLOGY, I have no idea where
those hundreds of thousands are supposed to have gone.)
--
Michael C. Berch
mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 18:28:57 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA04569 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:17:32 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id SAA04507 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:17:15 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709150117.SAA04507@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <11.6B77E028@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 3:25:03 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 4973; Mon, 15 Sep 97 03:24:20 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 5948; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 03:24:20 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:51:39 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 15 Sep 1997 01:34:15 GMT from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 01:34:15 GMT Aldo-Pier Solari
said:
Aldo, I have no desire to have a *discussion* about this, but there are a
few more *facts* I need to correct:
>Not true. Check out MITVMA.MIT.EDU: FISH-ECOLOGY is operative at the new
>host
Yes.
>and it has been so since a week ago.
No, the first test message was from 'Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:14:26 EDT', ie 3
days ago. Either way it does not matter, because you did not tell us
where the new host was until yesterday, and we do not read people's
minds. During the first 10 requests, we either knew or believed that you
had no host.
>You've got to stop harassing list owners on arbitrary grounds as
>well as stoping this clear violation of the intrinsic copyright
>you've defended elsewhere (when it came close to your interests).
As I know that names cannot be copyrighted, I highly doubt that I ever
defended this theory elsewhere. Even if I had, I can assure you that the
boss of the boss of my boss's boss did not.
>Thing's you try to keep control over such things because without them
>you're a manpower surplus :-).
Right, without FISH-ECOLOGY I will be waiting in unemployment lines and
starving :-)
>] *My* answer to this 11th request was that I would recommend migrating
>the
>] SUNET list to MIT.
>
>Well, what a position shift :-) Amazing ... just amazing the power
>of public fora such as LIST-MANAGERS :-).
I told you about this decision in a message dated 'Sat, 13 Sep 1997
17:27:11 +0200'. That was long before you made use of "the power of
LIST-MANAGERS".
>] and threatened to sue the government.
>
>Haha, not the government but you. Come down from the horse.
>Nobody's going to take you seriously of you argue that way :-).
>Unless you believe you are 'the government' :-) or that you are
>somewhere above the law & copyright conventions.
Aldo, you have never threatened to sue me personally, nor would you have
any grounds since the decisions you object to were made by my management,
but please, I don't want to be holding you. Just hire a lawyer and do it.
Since I will soon be waiting in unemployment lines, I will never be able
to afford a good lawyer and I am sure to lose!
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 18:53:41 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA05131 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:24:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from kira.ici.net (kira.ici.net [207.180.0.37]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id SAA05113 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:24:04 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from klingon.ici.net (lbm@klingon [207.180.0.40])
by kira.ici.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA24883
for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:31:49 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost (lbm@localhost)
by klingon.ici.net (8.8.5/8.8.4) with SMTP
id VAA20991 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:31:54 -0400 (EDT)
X-Authentication-Warning: klingon.ici.net: lbm owned process doing -bs
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:31:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Linda B. Merims"
X-Sender: lbm@klingon
To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: FISH-ECOLOGY Controversy
In-Reply-To: <199709150037.RAA00901@honor.greatcircle.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Eric, after reading the discussion on this matter from both
your and Aldo's point of view, it is my considered opinion
as a list owner that you are a perfect shit.
Not to mention a thief.
Linda B. Merims
lbm@ici.net
Massachusetts, USA
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 18:56:37 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA06769 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:43:04 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from relay1.shore.net (relay1.shore.net [192.233.85.129]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id SAA06731 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:42:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from jane.smoe.org (jeffw@smoe.org [204.167.97.154])
by relay1.shore.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id VAA26552;
Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:50:29 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by jane.smoe.org (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4-daemon-mode-relay2)
id VAA26258; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:51:42 -0400
Message-ID: <19970914215141.24120@smoe.org>
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:51:41 -0400
From: Jeff Wasilko
To: Eric Thomas
Cc: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
References: <199709150117.SAA04507@honor.greatcircle.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.76
In-Reply-To: <199709150117.SAA04507@honor.greatcircle.com>; from "Eric Thomas" on Mon, Sep 15, 1997 at 02:51:39AM +0200
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Mon, Sep 15, 1997 at 02:51:39AM +0200, Eric Thomas wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 01:34:15 GMT Aldo-Pier Solari
> said:
>
> Aldo, I have no desire to have a *discussion* about this, but there are a
> few more *facts* I need to correct:
Would you please be kind enough to take this to private mail?
There's no reason to expose all of list-managers to your disagreement.
Jeff
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 18:56:44 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA05910 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:31:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from blackhole.dimensional.com (blackhole.dimensional.com [208.206.176.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id SAA05873 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:31:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from flatland.dimensional.com (tedsmith@flatland.dimensional.com [208.206.176.24])
by blackhole.dimensional.com (8.8.7/8.8.nospam) with SMTP id TAA20450;
Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:39:31 -0600 (MDT)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:39:31 -0600 (MDT)
From: Theodore M Smith
To: Eric Thomas
cc: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
In-Reply-To: <199709142353.QAA26068@honor.greatcircle.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Eric Thomas wrote:
> I
> did not approve your message because it was slanderous and approving it
> would have created all sorts of problems:
>
> 1. Explicit approval of the use of government resources to slander the
> government.
Hmmmmm.
Now that statement _is_ a bit interesting.
I for one certainly hope that in all the many places government
resources support listservs or other places for exchange of information,
that doesn't give government employees the idea of censoring statements
they deem "slanderous." Particularly because in one way or another a
great deal of the internet could be deemed to be "government resources."
Ted Smith
Denver, Colorado USA
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 18:56:51 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id SAA05913 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:32:06 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from fobos.ulpgc.es (fobos.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id SAA05861 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:31:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cicei.ulpgc.es (cicei.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.20])
by fobos.ulpgc.es (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id CAA19388
for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:43:25 +0100
Received: from CICEI/SpoolDir by cicei.ulpgc.es (Mercury 1.31);
15 Sep 97 02:38:34 GMT
Received: from SpoolDir by CICEI (Mercury 1.31); 15 Sep 97 02:38:11 GMT
From: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
Organization: Univ. de Las Palmas de G.C.
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:38:07 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.31
Message-ID: <35E565389B@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
] From: Eric Thomas :
Well, this will be my last message in reply to Mr. Thomas. As you
see, he has high toughts of list owner's work & efforts :-)
Mr. Thomas shifts his own definitions on what a list owner is
depending on his interests :-). OK, that's expected when someone is
between the sword and the wall.
] You cannot copyright a name.
No, that's why you have copyrighted the name LISTSERV :-)
] Technically, an owner is a person to whom the organization running the
] list server is delegating certain technical privileges
Yes, Mr. Thomas: A list owner is someone you let add&del but the
medium which s/he created is yours because you print it in your
electronic offset: You are saying 'my dad own's all of the magazines
he prints at his office' :-) and he lets the magazine staff add&del
lines :-). Looking at your Catalist copyright notice I do not find
the same philosphy. Be coeherent, please :-).
] Then there is the "intangible" role of the list owner as the person who
] drives the discussion forward, etc. This is a gray area.
Yes, and in this 'gray area' you decide what is right&worng, dont
you ? :-)
] You can't, so you're wasting your time, especially as this is what SUNET
] is planning to do anyway.
Better so to everyone. You thought you could override a list owner
as you, normally, override hardware :-).
] Ah, what's a few hundred thousand dollars between friends? :-)
Hey, I never thought FISH-ECOLOGY would be so much worth. In your
earlier message you said this list used just a tiny part of the
resources. Now, you attempt to sell the idea that the list costed
'hundreds of thousand dollars'. Do you believe people will buy this
? :-)
] It is interesting to note that, while you are telling the world that you
] own FISH-ECOLOGY and cannot believe that SUNET does not recognize your
] right to retain full control over all aspects of the list, at the same
] time you are asking for assistance in preventing a third party from
] retaining control of a mailing list that you do not have the beginning of
] any involvement with.
No, I just asked for the review of the LSTOWN-L list :-). I have
not attempted to gain any control over your list. Now, if you
believe that talking privately to listserv owners means 'gaining
control' over your list, that's another thing :-)
] Over the years, you have kicked hundreds of people out of
] FISH-ECOLOGY ...
hehe. Now the list was badly managed ? :-). Why is it the largest
in the world ? :-). I just kicked around 10 users (7 commercial
spammers, 3 academic) in exactly 3 years. All those kicked persons
attempted to have my list closed down and my academic life wasted
and, yes, naturally, all of them expressed they were unfairly kicked
:-).
The list became successful due to my policy (which came about thru a
compilation of list owners opinions both at this forum and at
LSTOWN-L when I was viciously attacked by those persons when I
hardly knew how to send an email :-). If there are logs from 1994
to this forum, part of the material may be found there. Even Mr.
Thoma's thought about list owning and copy right, something
radically different from what he's saying now :-).
I submitted my policy to MITVMA, the new co-owner (FISH-ECOLOGY
member for years) AND the responsible at their data center: No one
had a single point of view on the policy. It was accepted :-).
]But now that YOU got kicked out, it is suddenly different and
]accepting it is not an option.
That's what you attempt to show because you cannot accept a list
owner did dismiss your technical know-how on ethical grounds. You
see, people are not idiots like you use to day. I moved my list
somewhere else, *you* were kicked :-). Now, you opinions is shifted
because the older site is stone dead :-).
] just ask MIT to start a SUNET-BASHING list?
FISH-ECOLOGY is for fish research, not to bash you there :-). You
are not so important in the marine research community :-) but you've
got something fishy, for sure :-).
However, as I have a policy of transparency with my subscribers,
I'll keep them informed on whether someone (you ?) will harass them
attempting to create havoc among them (that's why you did not close
down the site while you knew it was operative at another site).
Tomorrow, you'll be getting thousands of unsub commands, at the
older site, dont worry :-).
] Either way, by the time you are done, and assuming things go according to
] plan, the list will have been transferred to MIT and SUNET ...
hehe, as far as I know, the list has been at the MIT for a few days,
already. You dont decide nothing on my medium: Learn it and take it
gracefully. You have to learn that list owners cannt be overridden
like you do with your boxes :-).
] formally transferred all the associated rights to MIT
hehe, you do not have any rights over FISH-ECOLOGY.
] including the right to have to deal with you.
Yes, you can do whatever you like. But, I assume, there, you decide
nothing either :-).
]Did you pause to think how much time they will have to waste now
]that the WWW interface is gone?
SUNET refused to let me move the logs :-). Anyway, you had already
lost 2 years of logs (+ software repository + duzins of ebooks,
papers, etc.) in a crash ... we can always start again. The
know-how is there. FE doesnt need you :-).
] Now 1791 people will have to do without it because Aldo Solari picked up
] a personal fight with the guy who runs the service at SUNET
No personal fight. You attempted to destroy my medium and lost the
game. The RATIONALE of all this, as I see it, is that a list is a
medium and the owner has copyright conventions and membership
behind.
You're not the 'anti-christ' but just a programmer with little human
knowledge and keyboard ethics :-)
Cheers,
APS/list owner FISH-ECOLOGY
*******************************************************************
FISH-ECOLOGY: New addresses from Sept. 1997 and on. Please, print.
*******************************************************************
Server (to un/subscribe): LISTSERV@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
The conference: FISH-ECOLOGY@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Requests: FISH-ECOLOGY-REQUEST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
*******************************************************************
----
Aldo-PierSolari , Fish.Res.Gr./ULP
Home-page: http://www.ulpgc.es/usuarios/solaris/index.html
PGPKey ID: 0xFDD1FD36 -- IWillNotFailThoseWithWhomIServe
----
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 19:23:58 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id TAA08207 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:03:06 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id TAA08190 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:02:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA22596
; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:10:01 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970914200321.007202b4@solar.sky.net>
References: <34D5182C16@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:55:24 -0700
To: Paul Allen Rice , LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 6:03 PM -0700 9/14/97, Paul Allen Rice wrote:
>Now that both sides have made comments can we move on? This is obviously
>no longer a discussion for the list.
But it is a great example of why I tell people to settle out these
details at the beginning... (grin)
chuq
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 19:51:47 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id TAA08778 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:11:21 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id TAA08743 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:11:08 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709150211.TAA08743@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <15.F2BFDFDE@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 4:18:57 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 5093; Mon, 15 Sep 97 04:18:13 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 6200; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 04:18:13 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 03:42:04 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Government censorship issues
To: Theodore M Smith
cc: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:39:31 -0600 (MDT) from Theodore M
Smith
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:39:31 -0600 (MDT) Theodore M Smith
said:
> I for one certainly hope that in all the many places government
>resources support listservs or other places for exchange of information,
>that doesn't give government employees the idea of censoring statements
>they deem "slanderous." Particularly because in one way or another a
>great deal of the internet could be deemed to be "government resources."
Quite frankly, I don't know what the official policy would be. I prefer
unmoderated lists and I had just never been put in a position where I had
to explicitly approve the processing of a message which slandered the
government and whose publication would be funded by the government. It
did not sound like something that I should do without making sure it did
not violate some rule. If the list had been totally unmoderated, it would
not have been a problem. If the policy is that we take all postings, we
take all postings. If the policy is that I have to review them and decide
which ones are "appropriate", well, it becomes more delicate.
Furthermore, I would not have any problem with "approving" material that
simply expresses negative views. What stopped me is that I felt a lawyer
would probably consider the message to be slander.
This is the first time I have this problem in 7 years and I think it was
an exceptional case. This being said, I have heard of lists migrating to
commercial providers because they wished to openly criticize the
government, and this was not possible on a State-funded university. This
was in the US.
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 19:52:23 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id TAA10404 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:33:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from oronet.com.ph (cgy.oronet.com.ph [203.172.19.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id TAA10397 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:32:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost by oronet.com.ph (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
id KAA27137; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 10:52:31 +0800
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 10:52:31 +0800 (HKT)
From: Jessie Christopher E Lagrosas
X-Sender: jessie@cgy
To: Eric Thomas
cc: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
In-Reply-To: <199709150117.SAA04507@honor.greatcircle.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I think you guys have gone too far ...
Isnt it just right for you to create another list for such a discussion ?
I would appreciate reading more about MAILING LISTS' technicalities than
that of the legality of it.(Though it is important) But it seems that the
discussion for the FISH ECOLOGY have gone beyond and not fit for
LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM.
thankx
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 19:59:12 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id TAA11378 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:42:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from yoss.canweb.net (yoss.canweb.net [207.139.235.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id TAA11369 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:42:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (yossman@localhost)
by yoss.canweb.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA25943
for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:50:11 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:50:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: yossman
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: hi there
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
i'm having a devil of a time setting up a digest version of a list i
already have running. i'm fairly certain i'm just missing something
'simple' that just isn't intuitively coming to me. unfortunately the
documentation on the subject isn't exactly wonderful. it appears to be
missing some key element.
i have all the aliases set up in /etc/aliases for digested versions of a
'test' list i have set up, but how does this test-digest list build the
mail for processing? where does it get it's input from? where does the
output go? it doesn't seem to be automatic when you post to just 'test'?
i've scoured the Net for FAQs on the matter, and i've read Doc/README,
Doc/README.digest, quick-digest-setup, even some online stuff i found in
the newsgroups, NOTHING tells me the mechanics behind how this really
works, at least not in enough detail that is actually helpful.
it doesn't help the 'digest' feature seems to be an after-thought, and
that most people aren't willing to even get into it until majordomo
supports it internally, which doesn't help me at all of course.
i'd appreciate any help, including pointers to better places to ask or
read more about it.
yossman
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yossarian Holmberg (yossman) yossman@yossman.org
System Administrator, National Online http://www.yossman.org/
my statements are my own, not my employer's -- i do not speak for them.
'... and if i die, before i learn to speak .. can money pay for all the
days i've lived awake but half asleep?' -- Primitive Radio Gods,
"Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand"
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 20:51:51 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA24202 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:49:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from fobos.ulpgc.es (fobos.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA18826 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:21:15 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cicei.ulpgc.es (cicei.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.20])
by fobos.ulpgc.es (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id EAA19729;
Mon, 15 Sep 1997 04:32:29 +0100
Received: from CICEI/SpoolDir by cicei.ulpgc.es (Mercury 1.31);
15 Sep 97 04:27:37 GMT
Received: from SpoolDir by CICEI (Mercury 1.31); 15 Sep 97 04:27:24 GMT
From: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
Organization: Univ. de Las Palmas de G.C.
To: Jessie Christopher E Lagrosas ,
LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 04:27:15 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.31
Message-ID: <37B76A715D@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
] From: Jessie Christopher E Lagrosas :
]But it seems that the discussion for the FISH ECOLOGY have gone
]beyond and not fit for LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM.
Well, I am sorry for the part that concerns me. With my initial
message, I attempted to find a wider knowledge base to deal with
this problem. However, you should consider the following situation:
1. A list owner has been overrun by a dismissed sysop;
2. The list owner comes to a forum for list owners to put forward
the issue (without mentioning any names);
3. The offending party comes to the list, sets up a good flame war
and many of the members (and the owner as well) request the
discussion is stopped (and it is). This *may be* the intention
in creating the havoc: That the issue is not discussed.
You see, systems operators are well aware of list mechanics and how
some terminology (i.e. 'vendetta', 'sue the government' and such
expressions) hit readers. They know what phrases will lead to a
flame war and to the intervention of the list owner. I've seen this
before.
Cheers,
APS/list owner FISH-ECOLOGY
*******************************************************************
FISH-ECOLOGY: New addresses from Sept. 1997 and on. Please, print.
*******************************************************************
Server (to un/subscribe): LISTSERV@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
The conference: FISH-ECOLOGY@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Requests: FISH-ECOLOGY-REQUEST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
*******************************************************************
----
Aldo-PierSolari , Fish.Res.Gr./ULP
Home-page: http://www.ulpgc.es/usuarios/solaris/index.html
PGPKey ID: 0xFDD1FD36 -- IWillNotFailThoseWithWhomIServe
----
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 20:57:37 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id TAA13951 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:57:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from panix.com (panix.com [198.7.0.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id TAA13807 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:56:10 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from dfl@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.7/PanixU1.3) id XAA21478 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:03:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Danny Lieberman
Message-Id: <199709150303.XAA21478@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com (List Managers)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:03:57 -0400 (EDT)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> Would you please be kind enough to take this to private mail?
> There's no reason to expose all of list-managers to your disagreement.
Actually, aside from my inner-rubbernecker wanting to watch the rest
of this car-crash, I think there's something we can learn from this.
After reading Aldo and Eric's first back and forth my first thought
was about how lucky I am to have the list-host that I am using.
Anyway glad to see that this list isn't completely dead!
--
Danny Lieberman
dfl@panix.com
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 21:02:27 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA23901 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:46:46 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA23894 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:46:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA31292
; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:54:20 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <35E565389B@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:43:45 -0700
To: "Aldo-Pier Solari" , LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 7:38 PM -0700 9/14/97, Aldo-Pier Solari wrote:
>] You cannot copyright a name.
>
>No, that's why you have copyrighted the name LISTSERV :-)
they haven't. It's trademarked, not copyrighted.
Aldo, if you don't know that much about how this stuff works, please
shut up and quit proving it to us.
Frankly, BOTH sides of this are too busy grinding axes and posturing
for anyone to figure out which side, if any, is right. And I, for one,
have already stopped caring.
Can some list mom please get these people to carry on their pissing
match in private?
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 21:07:09 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA26509 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:58:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from server.postmodern.com (kristeva.postmodern.com [198.102.244.54]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA26493 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:58:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from 198.102.244.52 (foucault.postmodern.com [198.102.244.52]) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-960422) with ESMTP id VAA09266; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:05:19 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <341CB410.5A61C692@postmodern.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:05:45 -0700
From: "Michael C. Berch"
Reply-To: mcb@postmodern.com
Organization: Postmodern Consulting, California USA
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01a (Macintosh; I; PPC)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: yossman
CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: hi there
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
References:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
yossman wrote:
> [Majordomo digest question]
>
> i'd appreciate any help, including pointers to better places to ask or
> read more about it.
The Majordomo-Users mailing list (majordomo-users@greatcircle.com).
I believe at present that you need to be a member to post, in any case it's a
good place for Majordomo admins to hang out and ask/answer questions.
--
Michael C. Berch
mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 21:08:09 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id TAA13428 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:54:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id TAA13368 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:53:54 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709150253.TAA13368@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <10.EDA33A54@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 5:01:45 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 5271; Mon, 15 Sep 97 05:01:01 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 6568; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 05:01:00 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 04:18:27 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: FISH-ECOLOGY Controversy
To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com, "Linda B. Merims"
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:31:53 -0400 (EDT) from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:31:53 -0400 (EDT) "Linda B. Merims"
said:
>Eric, after reading the discussion on this matter from both your and
>Aldo's point of view, it is my considered opinion as a list owner that
>you are a perfect shit.
>
>Not to mention a thief.
Thank you Linda. It is comforting to see that name-calling is the best
you could produce.
You know, sometimes it can be difficult to do your job and keep your
loyalties straight. FISH-ECOLOGY is a prime example. There just aren't
adequate enough words in the English language to express how little
personal interest I have in this list. I do not understand what they
discuss, I do not even like fish, none of the people in my profession (or
in related professions) have heard about the list. I know two fish
scientists, of which I have met none. I run 94 other lists, of which the
most popular (and most well known) is LANTRA-L, by a big factor.
LANTRA-L, now THAT's a list I have some personal interest in. It is about
translation and sometimes I browse the archives and find it quite
interesting. As for my job, not only is there more than enough to justify
my continued assignment even with the 30 largest lists removed, but I
worry about losing it about as often as government employees usually do.
Which is irrelevant, because the Internet field offers much better
employment safety than any government :-)
So as far as my personal little world is concerned, if Neptune threw a
tantrum tomorrow and burned all the fish related lists to a crisp the
world over, I would not even blink. Just don't burn the interesting
lists, ok? I would have deleted FISH-ECOLOGY a couple years ago when Aldo
started sending more questions per unit of time than I like to receive
from any single list owner, and today I would not be called names. I
would be a complete jerk if I acted like that, of course, which is why I
don't.
I always set personal considerations aside when I do my job, and I always
do my best to do it well. My job in this respect was to protect my
employer's investment in a list which saves my employer a lot of money. I
realize that this may sound like an evil corporate plot the way I wrote
it, but my employer's money is the taxpayers' money. This is actually one
of the reasons I accepted the job, we are saving goobs of taxpayer money
by reducing FAX and phone usage and replacing it with Internet lines, and
that has always made me happy, on a personal level. So when Aldo asked me
to delete the list in spite of not having a new host, I went against my
personal desires and did not delete it, and my boss confirmed that this
was what I had to do. At my other job, where we also ran a web site for
Aldo, I deleted all the files the moment Aldo said he was moving the web
site elsewhere. Two minutes later, I reiterated to him that the SUNET
lists were not going anywhere until my management had given me new
orders. Same person, different jobs, different rules.
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 21:13:31 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id UAA19245 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:22:56 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (mycroft.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.35]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id UAA18994 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:22:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.8.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-970426)
id UAA02871; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:24:10 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709150324.UAA02871@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <11.CAF55448@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 5:29:25 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 5434; Mon, 15 Sep 97 05:28:41 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 6909; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 05:28:41 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 05:01:13 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:38:07 GMT from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:38:07 GMT Aldo-Pier Solari
said:
>Well, this will be my last message in reply to Mr. Thomas.
Good, then it is the last time I am required to correct your factual
inaccuracies.
>] You cannot copyright a name.
>
>No, that's why you have copyrighted the name LISTSERV :-)
No, it is a trademark. You cannot copyright a word and you cannot get a
trademark unless there is some TRADE going on, which is not the case with
FISH-ECOLOGY.
>Looking at your Catalist copyright notice I do not find the same
>philosphy. Be coeherent, please :-).
CataList is not a list, it is a piece of software and data to go with it,
both of which can be copyrighted. It does not have the beginning of
anything to do with this discussion.
>Hey, I never thought FISH-ECOLOGY would be so much worth. In your
>earlier message you said this list used just a tiny part of the
>resources.
Yes, this is correct. You are perfectly aware of the fact that SUNET
bought a MUCH faster machine last year, which also cost a lot less than
the mainframe we had before. I must have like 50 messages from you
demanding to know how much faster the machine would be, when it would
arrive, etc.
>Now, you attempt to sell the idea that the list costed 'hundreds of
>thousand dollars'.
The list started on the mainframe, as you know, and it was a pretty big
fraction of the mainframe's limited capacity, as you also know because
you kept complaining about performance. That mainframe had cost a little
fortune and you were using a pretty big fraction of it for 2-3 years. Now
we have a box that is like 10 times faster and you are using a pretty big
fraction of 1/10th of it. What exactly is inconsistent?
>All those kicked persons attempted to have my list closed down and my
>academic life wasted
I remember spending about 20h defending you and writing memos to my
bosses saying that, in spite of some valid points, the complaint should
be dismissed because the list was useful. I received 800 e-mail messages
just for this one complaint and I was really happy to have to set my
personal feelings aside and save the list when I could just have written
a quick memo saying I felt the complaints had merit and let my management
nuke it. Thank you for reminding me.
>That's what you attempt to show because you cannot accept a list owner
>did dismiss your technical know-how on ethical grounds.
Aldo, I could not care less about this! :-) If ANY list owner at SUNET
wants to find a new host at a competent site where I don't have to worry
about users complaining that the list no longer works and why did SUNET
delete it without warning and so on, I am willing to migrate them! It
means LESS WORK for me and MORE RESOURCES for others!
>SUNET refused to let me move the logs :-)
This is completely inaccurate. Neither you nor MIT have ever asked for
the logs to be moved, and moving the logs is actually one of my
requirements to MIT in order for SUNET to migrate the list.
>No personal fight. You attempted to destroy my medium
By refusing to delete it, I know...
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 21:37:06 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id VAA01651 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:32:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id VAA01593 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:32:44 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709150432.VAA01593@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <8.BBA90FD9@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 6:40:34 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 5609; Mon, 15 Sep 97 06:39:50 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 7286; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 06:39:51 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 05:29:14 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM, "Michael C. Berch"
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:16:06 -0700 from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:16:06 -0700 "Michael C. Berch"
said:
>Um... a list with 1791 members, even if quite active, would hardly cause
>even a low-end Pentium to breathe hard.
Right, but in 1989, when SUNET started all this, you couldn't buy a
low-end Pentium. I don't want to start an endless religio-historical
discussion :-), but for a variety of reasons, many of which had nothing
to do with mailing lists, SUNET bought a mainframe in 1989. This
machine's main purpose was to run the central EARN site for Nordic
countries, and it also hosted mailing lists. Initially the mailing lists
were like 2% of the resources, but this increased with time until it came
to be the main resource drain in 1994 or so. The machine was in operation
from 1989 to 1996, at which point SUNET bought a dedicated server for the
mailing list service.
Believe it or not, it made perfect sense financially :-) The mainframe
was required anyway for reasons unrelated to the mailing lists, so the
issue was whether to pay for upgrades or buy a box on the side for the
mailing list service (and migrate everything, retrain the users, etc).
The upgrade would come with a year of free maintenance, whereas not
upgrading would dramatically increase maintenance costs after a year.
Nowadays you can get a very fast box for $3k or so and it will have a
faster CPU than a mainframe, but not so long ago it was more like $50k if
you wanted it to match the mainframe's CPU, and you can triple that
easily for manpower (given tax levels in Sweden). Either way, the
maintenance contracts would kill you eventually, so upgrading saved
money.
Bean counters and lawyers would calculate FISH-ECOLOGY costs by
multiplying the running, upgrade and (amortized) acquisition costs of the
machine over the period being considered by the fraction of the CPU time
that was used by the list, and then add bandwidth, manpower, etc. Based
on what I know, and on a report said bean counters made the year I was
employed and which stated that the cost of employing me was a figure that
was about 3 times my salary before withdrawal (a LOT of this was
employment tax of course, Sweden being Sweden, but still), they should
end up with six figures. I remember asking my boss how the bean counters
got the notion that I was costing 3 times what I was being paid, and he
shrugged and said they were just applying standard accounting principles
per various laws and government regulations that changed each year.
>Am I missing something? I do know that LISTSERV is probably the world's
>most expensive list processing software :-), but aren't we off by a
>couple orders of magnitude here?
Well, one site runs a number of large lists totalling 4,181,234
subscriptions on a P5-166 with 192M, including the deliveries. These are
very large lists, so monthly averages, while still in the 500k range, are
not really a very useful measurement. There are many days with near-zero
activity and then days well above a million deliveries. SUNET now uses an
AlphaServer 1000A, which is essentially a PC server with an Alpha chip
inside. This can deliver some 2.xM messages daily, of which we currently
do about 500-600k (the ratio being the two being due to budgeting
issues).
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Sun Sep 14 22:37:46 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id WAA07984 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:03:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id WAA07834 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:02:55 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA31440
; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:10:35 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <199709150432.VAA01593@honor.greatcircle.com>
References: Message of Sun, 14 Sep 1997 18:16:06 -0700 from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:05:13 -0700
To: Eric Thomas , LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM,
"Michael C. Berch"
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 8:29 PM -0700 9/14/97, Eric Thomas wrote:
>I don't want to start an endless religio-historical
>discussion :-),
Too late.
(sigh)
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 00:07:42 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id XAA22061 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:14:31 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id XAA22048 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:14:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from pcusa80.pcusa.org (pcusa80.pcusa.org [206.115.64.80]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id GAA00624 for ; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 06:57:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from pcusa01.ecunet.org by pcusa80.pcusa.org id aa26924;
12 Sep 97 9:50 EDT
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 09:50:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Merrill Cook"
In-Reply-To: from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Sep 11, 97 08:45:27 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <9709120950.aa28293@pcusa01.ecunet.org>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
>From Chuq Von Rospach:
>
> Well, even without the central authorization, it'll break down a lot
> slower than the current system, if only because there are better checks
> and balances and a higher level of sophistication necessary
> successfully pull off a forgery.
Until we get end-user mail programs in place that make it easy,
the problem is not that hackers need to be sophisticated, but that
the end-users have to have a clue. =You= may have a network of
friends watching all the public key repositories for a fake key
with your name on it, but how many of the newbies on my or any
other system are going to have that in place for a while? If they
don't have a public key in the first place, let alone a network of
people watching out for them, it'd be that much easier to spoof.
Odd as my name is, there's a politician out in Utah or someplace
like that who uses it too -- it's going to take a pretty good bump
up in sophistication to keep mailing list software from confusing
us for one another in public key repositories, let alone do
rudimentary validation in the first place. It'll be relatively
easy, I suspect, to get a list manager to trace a particular
signed request to a particular signed public key in a particular
repository or site, and the key might even have been signed by
some relatively well known and trusted folks -- will all that let
it know that it is him and not me that is subscribing? Or will it
need to care?
> likely, if I get a questionable request, I'll go looking for the public
> key on the site of the e-mail address. If the key isn't in a repository
> that's known/trusted, like the one pgpkeys.mit.edu runs, I'll go back
The part I don't like is "I'll go looking". How about "my list
manager software will go looking"? I don't have time to go
validate even a small number of the hundreds of folks who might
want to subscribe to my list(s). (I know it would be good for the
list owner to do that, but let's posit that we want all validation
for a signed subscribe request to be validated automatically by
the list software, not the list owner.)
Does the MIT repository do validation? Last time I looked, it was
just a place where keys could be stored and accessed, and people
can sign each other's keys.
> to the source. So just creating a spoofed key does you nothing, because
> it'll be tagged with the e-mail address, and I"ll go to that
> site/address to get the public key. So you need physical access to the
Tagged with "an" email address. Not necessarily the right one. And
I'm wondering if I want to put something in another public place
that has my email address on it for all to see -- I'm already
getting more spam than I really want. Maybe we can get the public
key repositories to forward mail to the registered email address,
rather than displaying it for all the world to see. But that's
another subject.
> If you try to toss in a key for my address on a major key repository,
> it isn't likely to go long without being caught, and it requires
> someone in *my* chain of trusted validators to break down and validate
> it incorrectly. Doesn't matter how many of your guys validate it,
> unless one of them is also my guy, so again, I'm in control of my own
> quality-of-key-control, not you. And for an unknown key without a
Not quite. If I'm trying to decide whether a public key with your
name on it might have been posted by a third party, =that= key has
to be signed by someone =I= trust -- I don't care how many people
you trust sign your key. If I don't know any of them, I'm not
going to trust it. True, you then have an incentive to have your
key signed by someone that lots of other people trust, in hopes
that one of them is someone I trust; and in that sense it is your
responsibility; but it is my responsibility to decide whether or
not to trust the signatures on your public key, and thus you. In a
mail list context, particularly, it's still not clear to me how to
keep my list manager from declining most subscribe requests,
if the circles of trusted signers don't overlap.
I still think there's a problem closing that gap when we get to 40
or 100 million or a billion people all over the globe, unless we
get a bit sophisticated in how we do it. (Or maybe someone's
already done the sophisticated analysis to show that a critical
mass will develop and it will become easier, and I just haven't
run across it.)
I suspect in practice the signing function you talk about for
major systems will be more a matter of saying "this is the public
key for the person who owns this account on this system, and all
we know about her is that she pays her bills on time" rather than
"I've done a background check on the person who owns this account
on this system, and she really is who she says she is". Can we
expect more from fred.net?
When we are talking about making sure it really is the owner of a
mail account that wants to subscribe to a public list, that's
probably going to be good enough. The next step, knowing for sure
that the person is who she says she is, sounds like it will
require another bump up in sophistication, and that's the level
I'm trying to figure out.
> >Is there any list software
> >(or protocol) for handling signed requests? Any mail
>
> Nope. But as I noted above, those standards are just now being worked
> on. We're talking about Majordomo 3.0 (or 3.5) here, not 1.94.8. But
Why so long? Will list considerations be in the mix as the
standards are developed, or do we need to push for that? Is this a
good group to be involved in that development? Are any of the
members of this group (list) involved in developing the standards?
Thanks for the dialog. Hope my noodling isn't too boring or naive
for the rest of the list...
--
Regards,
Merrill Cook
Louisville KY
mcook@pcusa.org
http://www.pcusa.org/
-+-
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 00:57:00 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id AAA07275 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:23:55 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (mycroft.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.35]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id AAA06982 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:22:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mailgate.loud-n-clear.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.8.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-970426)
id XAA05054; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:50:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sleepy.demon.co.uk (sleepy.demon.co.uk [158.152.84.186]) by mailgate.loud-n-clear.com (NTMail 3.02.13) with ESMTP id ba172043 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 06:54:48 +0100
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 06:41:01 +0000
To: mcb@postmodern.com
Cc: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
From: Peter Scales
Subject: Horsepower [was Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please]
In-Reply-To: <341C8C52.BE24AC36@postmodern.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Turnpike Version 3.04
X-Info: Mailserver at loud-n-clear.com Ltd.
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In message <341C8C52.BE24AC36@postmodern.com>, "Michael C. Berch"
writes
>
>Um... a list with 1791 members, even if quite active, would hardly cause even
>a low-end Pentium to breathe hard.
>
Actually, we ran 60 lists with combined membership in excess of 1791 on
a 486DX25 for 18 months, hardly ideal, but it got the job done.
--
Pete
Peter Scales
The Old Well House, Church Street, Prees, Shropshire SY13 2DQ
+44 701 0708 422
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 01:02:28 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id AAA06244 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:19:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mailgate.loud-n-clear.com (mailgate.loud-n-clear.com [194.159.6.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id AAA06235 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:19:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sleepy.demon.co.uk (sleepy.demon.co.uk [158.152.84.186]) by mailgate.loud-n-clear.com (NTMail 3.02.13) with ESMTP id ka172052 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 07:27:39 +0100
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 07:27:20 +0000
To: mcb@postmodern.com
Cc: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
From: Peter Scales
Subject: Re: Horsepower [was Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please]
In-Reply-To: <341CDED7.50572319@postmodern.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Turnpike Version 3.04
X-Info: Mailserver at loud-n-clear.com Ltd.
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In message <341CDED7.50572319@postmodern.com>, "Michael C. Berch"
writes
>The point I was trying to make (if I dare even mention FISH-ECOLOGY again)
:-)
> was
>that even if you allow for the price of hardware and support in 1989, I can't
>imagine the internal marginal cost of a single list of 1791 subscribers as
>being more than a pittance; today, of course, it would be in the noise level.
That's interesting. Could you define marginal cost, please? The
biggest cost to us for any list is the admin time to weed out bad
addresses and deal with unsubscribe requests sent to us or the list,
rather than the list manager s/w. Cost of bandwidth is next and I
imagine that the fractional cost of the hardware isn't worth calculating
(although I've just done so - the cost of the hardware *in total* is
around 20 USD a week assuming a three year life, and the electricity
consumed (200W/hour) costs around 3 USD a week - divide by n lists...
say about a dollar a list a month?).
--
Pete
Peter Scales
The Old Well House, Church Street, Prees, Shropshire SY13 2DQ
+44 701 0708 422
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 02:41:00 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id CAA02266 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:21:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from server.postmodern.com (kristeva.postmodern.com [198.102.244.54]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id AAA01732 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:00:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from 198.102.244.52 (foucault.postmodern.com [198.102.244.52]) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-960422) with ESMTP id AAA11408; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:07:51 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <341CDED7.50572319@postmodern.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:08:22 -0700
From: "Michael C. Berch"
Reply-To: mcb@postmodern.com
Organization: Postmodern Consulting, California USA
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01a (Macintosh; I; PPC)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
CC: Peter Scales
Subject: Re: Horsepower [was Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please]
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
References:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Peter Scales wrote:
>
> In message <341C8C52.BE24AC36@postmodern.com>, "Michael C. Berch"
> writes
> >
> >Um... a list with 1791 members, even if quite active, would hardly
> cause even
> >a low-end Pentium to breathe hard.
> >
>
> Actually, we ran 60 lists with combined membership in excess of 1791
> on a 486DX25 for 18 months, hardly ideal, but it got the job done.
Oh, absolutely. I was just picking a current example. Until recently *all*
the lists at greatcircle.com, including List-Managers and the Firewalls lists
(about 17,000 direct subscribers, last I looked) were hosted on a single 486
box running BSDI. It's now a low-end Pentium.
The point I was trying to make (if I dare even mention FISH-ECOLOGY again) was
that even if you allow for the price of hardware and support in 1989, I can't
imagine the internal marginal cost of a single list of 1791 subscribers as
being more than a pittance; today, of course, it would be in the noise level.
--
Michael C. Berch
mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 12:14:00 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id JAA29161 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:34:18 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dirty.research.bell-labs.com (dirty.research.bell-labs.com [204.178.16.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id JAA29123 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:34:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from research.research.bell-labs.com ([135.104.1.3]) by dirty; Mon Sep 15 12:40:29 EDT 1997
Received: from chair.dnrc.bell-labs.com ([135.180.161.201]) by research; Mon Sep 15 12:40:30 EDT 1997
Received: (from rn@localhost) by chair.dnrc.bell-labs.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA05443 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:40:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: "ravi narayan"
Message-Id: <970915124031.ZM5441@chair>
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:40:31 -0400
In-Reply-To: Eric Thomas
"Re: FISH-ECOLOGY Controversy" (Sep 15, 4:18am)
References: <199709150253.TAA13368@honor.greatcircle.com>
Reply-To: rn@dnrc.bell-labs.com
X-Tra: Everything Including Chaos Is Predestined
X-Url: http://vger.rutgers.edu/~ravi
X-Uri: http://vger.rutgers.edu/~ravi
X-Mailer: Z-Mail (4.0.1 13Jan97)
To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: FISH-ECOLOGY Controversy
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sep 15, 4:18am, Eric Thomas wrote:
>
> I always set personal considerations aside when I do my job...
>
maybe you should not. unless your personal considerations do not give you
much conviction.
someone mentioned that this discussion (despite the name calling and the
urging of one person named chuq to others to "shut up") is important and
interesting, and i agree. with the indulgence of the folks who contribute
the resources to run this list (could be this person named chuq for all
i know!), i urge that we not "shut up" but indeed continue this debate!
-- ravi
--
man is, after all, merely an ape with an attitude.
- from "arrow of the blue skinned god", jonah blank
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 12:24:53 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id JAA04435 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:57:44 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (mycroft.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.35]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id JAA04303 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:57:07 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from public.lists.apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.8.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-970426)
id JAA11278; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:59:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [17.219.12.99] (A17-219-12-99.apple.com [17.219.12.99])
by public.lists.apple.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA17062
; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 10:03:03 -0700
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <9709120950.aa28293@pcusa01.ecunet.org>
References: from "Chuq Von
Rospach" at Sep 11, 97 08:45:27 pm
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:57:36 -0700
To: "Merrill Cook" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: mailbomb issues...
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 6:50 AM -0700 9/12/97, Merrill Cook wrote:
>Until we get end-user mail programs in place that make it easy,
>the problem is not that hackers need to be sophisticated, but that
>the end-users have to have a clue.
And if all we do is complain that we can't do it today, instead of
starting to think about how it ought to be done and work towards
getting it implemented, it'll never happen, either.
Which was my whole point all along. Sigh.
I am not, was not, never have been talking about a "today" solution.
You keep saying how it's not possible today, and waht the potential
problems are. I keep trying to point out if we don't start trying to
understand and SOLVE those problems, they'll never be solved. you go
ahead and wait for a perfect solution if you want. If people don't go
trying to create them, they'll never exist.
--
Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome
Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net)
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 12:46:10 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id MAA03684 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:25:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from siberia.demon.co.uk (siberia.demon.co.uk [158.152.123.170]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id MAA03441 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:24:57 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <199709151059.claire.97092889@siberia.demon.co.uk>
From: claire@siberia.demon.co.uk (Claire McNab)
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 10:59:58 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Re: Req./Assistance fr. Senior list owners, please
Reply-to: claire@siberia.demon.co.uk (Claire McNab)
In-reply-to: <199709150117.SAA04507@honor.greatcircle.com>
References: Message of Mon, 15 Sep 1997 01:34:15 GMT from list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.54) via PM-Demon V4.04
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On 15 Sep 97 at 2:51, Eric Thomas puddy cat purred:
> Aldo, I have no desire to have a *discussion* about this [snip]
Then, **please**, can you both just drop it?
You've both had your say.
--
Claire McNab -- Claire@siberia.demon.co.uk
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 12:54:25 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id MAA06036 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:38:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from fobos.ulpgc.es (fobos.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id MAA06002 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:38:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cicei.ulpgc.es (cicei.ulpgc.es [193.145.132.20])
by fobos.ulpgc.es (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA26514
for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 20:42:53 +0100
Received: from CICEI/SpoolDir by cicei.ulpgc.es (Mercury 1.31);
15 Sep 97 20:45:03 GMT
Received: from SpoolDir by CICEI (Mercury 1.31); 15 Sep 97 20:45:00 GMT
From: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
Organization: Univ. de Las Palmas de G.C.
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 20:44:56 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: kicked away from my own house
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.31
Message-ID: <48022C7136@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Due to Eric Thomas' (my former sysop at segate.sunet.se) letter to
my new academic sponsor, I've been removed as owner from my own
medium, today. I created FISH-ECOLOGY in October 1994 at the
Canadian DFO, moved to SUNET and dismissed E. Thomas (and SUNET) on
ethical grounds.
Now, E. Thomas, using his position at the Swedish University Network
wrote a dont-know-what letter to the MIT after which I was kicked
from my own house. After working my butt off to make FISH-ECOLOGY
what it is now, I feel violated by this.
It seems owner dont have rights, dont own anything and any sysop may
override us at will. Learn from this.
Aldo-Pier Solari
It led:
]Pending resolution of their dispute with Aldo-Pier Solari, I have
]removed his name as owner of the new list here, leaving you as sole
]owner. I have also put the list on Hold, preventing further message
]distribution; attempts to contribute will generate a notice of the
]delay.
----
Aldo-PierSolari , Fish.Res.Gr./ULP
Home-page: http://www.ulpgc.es/usuarios/solaris/index.html
PGPKey ID: 0xFDD1FD36 -- IWillNotFailThoseWithWhomIServe
----
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 14:19:14 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id NAA13334 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:23:27 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id NAA13288 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:23:15 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709152023.NAA13288@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <3.78CF2BD2@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:30:45 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 8940; Mon, 15 Sep 97 22:29:52 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 4061; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:29:52 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:16:44 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: kicked away from my own house
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GREATCIRCLE.COM
cc: ANGER@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 15 Sep 1997 20:44:56 GMT from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 20:44:56 GMT Aldo-Pier Solari
said:
>Now, E. Thomas, using his position at the Swedish University Network
>wrote a dont-know-what letter to the MIT after which I was kicked
>from my own house.
At no point did I request or even suggest that MIT should remove you as
owner of FISH-ECOLOGY. I did suggest that FISH-ECOLOGY needed at least
two owners (this was before I knew that this was already the case).
Again, SUNET intends to migrate your list to MIT and, once the migration
has taken place, you will be dealing exclusively with MIT and SUNET will
no longer have any kind of involvement in the debate. This will make
matters a lot simpler for everyone.
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 14:32:16 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id NAA15437 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:33:48 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from brickbat9.mindspring.com (brickbat9.mindspring.com [207.69.200.12]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id NAA15403 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:33:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [38.12.201.232] (ip232.san-francisco8.ca.pub-ip.psi.net [38.12.201.232])
by brickbat9.mindspring.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA22974;
Mon, 15 Sep 1997 16:41:26 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: themet@pop.mindspring.com
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <48022C7136@cicei.ulpgc.es>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:43:08 -0700
To: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
From: "Mark E. Taylor"
Subject: Re: kicked away from my own house
Cc: :
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
This is almost like a Kafka story.
This whole conflagration has really gotten way out of hand.
Mr. Solari wants to move the list to a new host which he has done.
For reasons I am still trying to understand the current host seems to
not want to let it go or at least seems to have some delays in
closing it down. Fine. Now essentially the ownership of the list
appears to be in dispute. Then the new host has been served with a
request of some kind indicating dispute of ownership and Aldo has
been taken off as list owner and the no new mail messages being
distributed.
My friends I suggest on this one you sit down with a neutral third
party who can render a decision on this matter (short of legal
action) but make a decision binding upon the two of you.
At 8:44 PM +0000 9/15/97, Aldo-Pier Solari wrote
>
>
>]Pending resolution of their dispute with Aldo-Pier Solari, I have
>]removed his name as owner of the new list here, leaving you as sole
>]owner. I have also put the list on Hold, preventing further message
>]distribution; attempts to contribute will generate a notice of the
>]delay.
I am also wondering by what legal authority this person is acting
upon. Did Thomas make some sort of threat in his communication?
Rival lists appear all the time on the internet. This is taking it
to the point of almost being malicious.
Clearly this issue has become inflamed and I suspect that only third
party neutral mediation may help at this point.
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 15:38:25 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id OAA00928 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 14:52:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id OAA00869 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 14:52:21 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199709152152.OAA00869@honor.greatcircle.com>
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <7.FD4B33F4@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 0:00:21 +0100
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 0071; Mon, 15 Sep 97 23:59:37 +0200
Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 6426; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 23:59:30 +0200
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 23:46:31 +0200
From: Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: kicked away from my own house
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, "Mark E. Taylor"
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:43:08 -0700 from
list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:43:08 -0700 "Mark E. Taylor"
said:
>For reasons I am still trying to understand the current host seems to
>not want to let it go or at least seems to have some delays in closing
>it down.
I wonder how many times I will have to say that SUNET wants to migrate
the list to MIT and abandon any legal rights SUNET might have in the
list.
Now, the list had not been migrated properly. Some subscribers were
dropped, the archives were lost, DIGEST options were reset, related
documents were not transferred, etc. SUNET does not want to delete its
copy of the data until it has been properly migrated to the new host.
Then SUNET's job will be over and the whole ball of wax will be in MIT's
court.
>Did Thomas make some sort of threat in his communication?
None whatsoever. He wants to get rid of the list as soon as possible.
>Rival lists appear all the time on the internet.
These are not rival lists. SUNET has nothing to do with fish and wants to
transfer the list to MIT.
Eric
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Mon Sep 15 15:51:35 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id OAA29415 for list-managers-outgoing; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 14:47:01 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cyberq.quality.org (cyberq.quality.org [199.181.80.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id OAA29126 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 14:45:55 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (help@localhost)
by cyberq.quality.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA03186;
Mon, 15 Sep 1997 17:52:00 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 17:52:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Bill Casti, CQA (System Administrator)"
To: Eric Thomas
cc: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM, ANGER@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: kicked away from my own house
In-Reply-To: <199709152023.NAA13288@honor.greatcircle.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Can you boys take your argument somewhere else, please! I'm not at all
interested in your histrionics and this isn't the place for you to handle
your internal quarrels. Find an arbitration list somewhere and fight it
out, but quit wasting the bandwidth here!
Regards.
=============================================================================
Bill Casti, CQA Email: help@quality.org
- List Moderator, "TQM in Manufacturing and Service Industries"
List Address: QUALITY@pucc.princeton.edu
=============================================================================
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Eric Thomas wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 20:44:56 GMT Aldo-Pier Solari
> said:
>
> >Now, E. Thomas, using his position at the Swedish University Network
> >wrote a dont-know-what letter to the MIT after which I was kicked
> >from my own house.
>
> At no point did I request or even suggest that MIT should remove you as
> owner of FISH-ECOLOGY. I did suggest that FISH-ECOLOGY needed at least
> two owners (this was before I knew that this was already the case).
> Again, SUNET intends to migrate your list to MIT and, once the migration
> has taken place, you will be dealing exclusively with MIT and SUNET will
> no longer have any kind of involvement in the debate. This will make
> matters a lot simpler for everyone.
>
> Eric
>
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Tue Sep 16 06:13:01 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id FAA24568 for list-managers-outgoing; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 05:43:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (mycroft.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.35]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id FAA24336 for ; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 05:42:15 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from frege.math.ethz.ch by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.8.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-970426)
id FAA25094; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 05:44:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from vaden.math.ethz.ch (bollow@vaden [129.132.146.136]) by frege.math.ethz.ch (8.6.12/Main-STAT-mailer) with ESMTP id OAA21440 for ; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:49:38 +0200
Received: (bollow@localhost) by vaden.math.ethz.ch (8.6.9/D-MATH-client) id OAA23596; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:49:38 +0200
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:49:38 +0200
Message-Id: <199709161249.OAA23596@vaden.math.ethz.ch>
From: Norbert Bollow
To: LIST-MANAGERS@GreatCircle.COM
In-reply-to: <48022C7136@cicei.ulpgc.es> (SOLARIS@cicei.ulpgc.es)
Subject: Re: kicked away from my own house
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Aldo-PierSolari wrote:
> It seems owner dont have rights, dont own anything and any sysop may
> override us at will. Learn from this.
I believe you are almost right about this: Since you don't seem to
have any kind of contract with the institution which provided the
computing resources for the list (and you did not pay for using those
resources), the term "list-owner" is only a technical term with no
legal implications whatsoever.
However you probably own the copyright for any texts you may have
written (this could include e.g. a "welcome message" or a "Frequently
Asked Questions" document).
-- Norbert.
P.S. It's not like you received nothing in return for the time you
invested in the mailing list: You had this great government-funded
opportunity for becoming widely-known in your field of research.
P.P.S. The person whom you've been accusing of irresponsible behaviour
is widely known and highly respected for significant contributions
in the field of mailing list software, and at least as long as his
arguments make more sense than yours, your accusations are not
going to help you if it is your goal to be granted "list-owner"
privileges at another mailing list server.
--
Norbert Bollow, Zuerich, Switzerland E-mail: NB@POBOX.COM
Would you like coaching in the art of thinking and decision-making?
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Tue Sep 16 14:53:43 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id OAA03002 for list-managers-outgoing; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:45:12 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id OAA02991 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:45:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mv.mv.com (mv.mv.com [192.80.84.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with ESMTP id VAA28286 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:13:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mem@localhost) by mv.mv.com (8.8.5/mem-940616) id AAA09982; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:20:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Mark E. Mallett"
Message-Id: <199709150420.AAA09982@mv.mv.com>
Subject: Re: hi there
To: yossman@yoss.canweb.net (yossman)
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:20:54 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com
In-Reply-To: from "yossman" at Sep 14, 97 10:50:10 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
>
> i'd appreciate any help, including pointers to better places to ask or
> read more about it.
One pointer is: don't title your messages "hi there" --
it looks like yet another sex spam and is likely to get
deleted unread.
And in general, try to always use a descriptive subject. Busy
people filter in various ways, subject being one of them.
-mm-
From owner-list-managers-outgoing Tue Sep 16 15:07:45 1997
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-970308-1) id OAA02709 for list-managers-outgoing; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:43:27 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) id OAA02688 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:43:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dns01.ops.usa.net (dns01.ops.usa.net [204.68.24.137]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-970824-1) with SMTP id LAA09569 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 11:43:20 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 19952 invoked by alias); 14 Sep 1997 18:51:11 -0000
Message-ID: <19970914185111.19950.qmail@dns01.ops.usa.net>
Received: (qmail 19927 invoked from network); 14 Sep 1997 18:51:09 -0000
Received: from 137.houston-02.tx.dial-access.att.net (HELO compaq) (12.65.129.137)
by dns01.ops.usa.net with SMTP; 14 Sep 1997 18:51:09 -0000
From: "Alan Czarnek"
To: "Aldo-Pier Solari"
Cc: